THE BEST

Whether you prefer chocolate chip cookies in the dough form i.e. my favorite way, aka the correct way, or as baked cookies, nothing improves on the Nestle Toll House recipe. I’ve been making it since I was a little one. I could make it in my sleep, probably. Which is good because I am unlikely to have a package of the Nestle chocolate chips to reference for the recipe on the back. Sorry, Toll House-lovahs, but I am a Ghiradelli Bittersweet 60% Cacao Baking Chips girl.
I’m am not alone in my praise for this recipe. Even my most favorite-est baking nerds on earth, the Cook’s Illustrated crew, agree. From their Baking Illustrated: “Toll House cookies are the American cookie jar standard. As such, they serve as the springboard for all other versions of the chocolate chip cookie.” So if you are after something different you might need a different recipe, but these cookies are the ultimate basic cookie.
And the dough. Oh, the delicious dough. I get a bit crazy just thinking about the dough this recipe creates.
If you do decide to fight nature and bake these(as I was forced to do since other folks were to consume them) the one tip I do not think that Nestle will tell you is to chill your dough a bit before spooning it out and baking it, unless you prefer your cookies ultra-thin.
There are many ways to jazz up this basic cookie, if perfection occasionally bores you. Try adding a package of pistachio pudding mix(which thankfully for me has few actual nuts in it) with flour-then you have green perfection. You can leave the chips out, spread and bake in a 9×13 pan, then sprinkle the chips on when you take it out of the oven. The chips melt and you can spread them like frosting. Mix it up. Add peanut butter chips. Add butterscotch chips. Just don’t add nuts. Nuts should be banned from cookies. Like coconut they ruin many desserts. In my humble opinion.
Enough.
Here’s your perfect cookie:
Chocolate Chip Cookies(ala Nestle Tollhouse)
1 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs(use pasteurized eggs if you are eating it as dough)
1 tsp. vanilla
2 1/4 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt.
Your favorite chocolate chip
1)Cream butter and sugars. I often do this by hand. Screw washing beaters. Sample this pure butter/sugar paste and but try to stop yourself from eating it all.
2)Add in eggs and vanilla. Its gonna look sort of gross and curdled. Deal with it.
3)Gradually add in flour, which you have sifted with the baking soda and salt.
4)Stir in chips.
5)Put in fridge
6)Heat oven to 350 degrees.
6)Just keep an eye on them and take them out when they look done. If you’ve decided to go that route. You are welcome to stop at step 5. And really, I would.

Happy happy, Joy joy: Cookie dough!

Two of the best words one can say: Cookie. Dough. I grew up in a family of cookie dough makers. You will note, we were dough makers, not cookie bakers. We would just make a bowl of dough and kept it in the fridge. Only silly mortals defile the dough by placing it in the hellish gates of the oven. The recipe for these Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies came from one of one of my favorite blogs, Joy the Baker. The conceit is that you make cookie dough balls in advance, freeze them, then bake later. If I had my druthers I would never bake this. But come Friday I’ve a buddhist BBQ to go to and I promised dessert so eventually I will make these into cookies. Let me clarify that it is a BBQ attended by mostly by buddhists, we will not be putting buddhists on the barbie.
I altered the recipe just a tad to make sure that the dough would be safe to eat raw. I hope it makes it to Friday.
Whole Wheat Chocolate Cookie Dough(adapted from Joy the Baker)
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
10 Tbsp. white flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup stevia or splenda for baking
1/4 cup pasteurized eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup chocolate chips(I used Ghiradelli bittersweet)
Cream butter and sugars. Blend in eggs and vanilla, stir in dry ingredients and lastly chocolate chips. Bake or not, your choice, but make the right one.