The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies. Ever.

I know that chocolate chip cookies are hard to mess up.  It seems that it doesn't matter which recipe you follow, when those tasty little cookies come out of the oven all warm and melty the last thing you think about is, "maybe I should have used a different recipe."  Of course that's not what you think.  If you're anything like me, you think, "damn...these are good."  And then you proceed to eat them for breakfast, as a late night snack, or just because.  I can come up with a good reason for eating cookies at any time of the day.

So I came across this recipe while perusing Pinterest, which has become a recipe obsession of mine.  The recipe proclaims itself to be the New York Times #1 chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Whether or not that claim is true is irrelevant.  This recipe is the bomb.  Given that I can't follow a recipe from start to finish, the original recipe can be found here.  I took the liberty of disregarding the author's advice on what not to do and made this recipe my very own.  My modified recipe is for those of us who don't want to take the time to chop up 2 pounds of chocolate by hand and would rather just open a few bags of chocolate chips.  It's also for those of us who don't know where in the heck a person goes about finding pastry flour.  It's for people who find the idea of refrigerating the dough for 24 hours before baking absolutely preposterous.  This is the recipe for those of us raised on Tollhouse who probably happen to have all the ingredients for this recipe in the cupboard.  This is the recipe for those of us who are afraid to change things too much because if it turns out awful then precious time and resources were wasted trying something new.  This recipe is for someone like me.

Let's begin, shall we?  Before we start, I should warn you that this is kind of a big recipe.  I haven't actually counted how many dozen it makes, but it's more than the Tollhouse recipe...probably almost double that.  You can cut it in half if you like, otherwise you can freeze the extra dough to use for later (I put instructions for that after the recipe).

What you will need:

1 lb butter, room temperature (I use salted butter because I love salt)
1 3/4 cups sugar (lately I prefer the taste of organic sugar so I use that, but it's not necessary)
2 1/4 cups dark brown sugar.  (I LOVE dark brown sugar.  There is no love for light brown sugar in my kitchen...but you can use it if you like it)
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
1 tablespoon salt (yes, in addition to the salted butter)
2 teaspoons baking powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

6 cups flour (I use 3 cups all-purpose and 3 cups white whole-wheat...use any combination you like, but don't use more wheat than white, you'll end up with hockey pucks)

3 12 oz bags semi-sweet chocolate chips (the original recipe called for dark chocolate...I made a batch with dark chocolate once and found it to be really gross.  The sweetness of the cookie wasn't able to balance the bitter of the chocolate)
1 bag Heath Bits 'O Brickle (optional)

Let's mix:

-You'll need to have the oven preheated to 350 at some point.  It takes me forever to make cookie dough so I wait to turn the oven on until I'm ready to put the dough on the pan.  I like to save energy when I can, and I appreciate a low electricity bill.
-Cream together the butter and both sugars.  I mix by hand because I'm too cheap to buy a mixer (and I count mixing cookie dough as an arm workout!).  If you use a mixer, I'm told you should use the paddle attachment.
-Once the butter and the sugars are well mixed, add the eggs one at time, stirring between each egg.  I know, redundant, but the original recipe calls for it so I do it.  I don't know that you have to, but I do (it adds to the stirring which in turn adds to the "arm workout").
-After the eggs are well mixed, add the vanilla and mix again.  Make sure all liquid is mixed in before adding the baking powder and baking soda or you will have a chemical reaction in your bowl and it'll change the taste of the cookies!
-Mix in the baking powder, baking soda, and salt
-Start adding the flour.  I usually add it a cup at a time because it's easier for me to stir it that way.  And the less flour I have in the bowl at one time, the less flour spray I get all over the kitchen, myself, and the dogs who linger constantly at my feet hoping I'll drop something.
-Lastly, it's time for the chocolate chips (and the Heath Bits, if you're using them).  It's usually at this time that the rings come off, the wooden spoon is cast aside, and I start mixing the dough with my hands.  For me, it's just easier and faster that way.  Those of you using a mixer should have no problem getting those chips mixed in at this point (cheaters).
-Time to put the dough to the pan.  I have one of those nifty little Pampered Chef scoops to dole out the perfect sized little ball of dough.  Seriously, I love that thing and for making cookies, it was well worth the $15 I spent on it.  If you don't happen to have a scoop (purchase one immediately), just put the dough on the pan the way you normally would, either by rolling dough into smallish balls or dropping dough onto the pan with a tablespoon...it's entirely up to you.
-Place the pan in the 350 degree oven for about 11-14 minutes.  My cookies from the scoop take exactly 11 minutes.  Let the cookies rest for a minute or two on the pan before moving them to a cooling rack, brown paper bag, etc.

And you're done!

Tips and Tidbits:

Seeing as this is such a big recipe and that it's normally just Simon and I in the house, we don't need a million cookies in the house at the ready.  Our waistlines would greatly suffer for that.  So I put a bunch of dough balls on a cookie sheet and pop them in the freezer while the first batch of cookies are in the oven.  By the time the 11 minutes of baking time has passed, the dough balls will be frozen enough to dump into a freezer bag to save for later.  I make about one of pan of cookies a week (or a day...sometimes we have days like that).  I usually put the frozen dough balls on the cookie sheet and THEN preheat the oven.  That gives the balls a little time to thaw out.  Add about a minute to the cooking time for the frozen balls.  Nothing beats a freshly baked cookie.

I know I made a comment about not wanting to refrigerate the dough for 24 hours as the original recipe states, but over the course of several batches I find that I prefer the cookies made from the frozen dough balls to the cookies made from the fresh dough.  Don't ask me why, because I have no idea why this would be so.  The cookies made from the frozen dough balls seem to be more dense and have a better texture.

And one thing about using wheat flour in your recipe.  After a few days post-baking, the cookies made with wheat flour seemed more dry and less soft than those that were made with only all-purpose flour.  That's where the freezing and baking one batch at a time comes in...the cookies are always fresh, and you never have more than you need.  If you're using wheat flour, my advice would be to make only as many as you're going to eat in the next couple days and freeze the rest.