The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe You've Ever Come Across

What are Chocolate Chip Cookies?

Chocolate chip cookies are essentially 'drop cookies', with chocolate chunks/chips as the main ingredient.
Drop cookies are made when you drop a spoonful of batter onto your baking pan. Usually, the batter used for these cookies is soft, but can still hold its shape when dropped onto the pan. The batter spreads out and flattens during the cooking process, assuming a circular shape.

Chocolate chip cookies are made of cocoa powder or chocolate-flavored dough, brown and white sugar, butter, vanilla, eggs, and chocolate chips.

There are different varieties of chocolate chip cookies that use different varieties of chocolate and additional ingredients such as oatmeal and nuts. There may also be vegan versions that use vegan margarine and egg alternatives.

A chocolate chip cookie can be called a 'double' or 'triple' cookie based on the combination of chocolate and dough types.

Where do Chocolate Chip Cookies Come From?

The original chocolate chip cookie recipe was invented in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield, who ran a tourist lodge named Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts.

In 1938, Wakefield and her cooking assistant Sue Brides were experimenting with dough for pecan drop cookies to treat her inn guests. This basic cookie recipe involved white and brown sugar. Wakefield, however, looked to add a twist to the dish and introduce melted baker's chocolate to the dough.

However, Wakefield and Brides realized that they had run out of baker's chocolate. Undaunted, they chopped Nestle semi-sweet chocolate bars and sprinkled them into the dough. Though Wakefield had expected the chocolate to melt and absorb into the dough, that did not happen. However, the result was a hit among the diners at the inn. Wakefield called the product Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies, which were the earliest chocolate chip cookies.

Word about this accidentally-created item spread thick and fast and the recipe appeared in Wakefield's cookbook 'Tried and True' in 1938. These delightful cookies were recommended to be consumed with ice-cream. The recipe was also published in a newspaper in Boston.

The cookie recipe was used by the Toll House Inn to promote itself and was featured in an influential radio program by Betty Crocker in 1939, which cemented the status of the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies as America's favorite cookie.

The huge demand for Wakefield's cookies also had a rub-off effect on the Nestle company, with sales of the Nestle chocolate bars, which were used to make the Toll House cookies, spiking. In 1939, the rights to use Wakefield's recipe and the Toll House brand name were sold to Nestle. Wakefield and Nestle inked an agreement whereby the latter got the rights to print the chocolate chip cookie recipe on the back of the packaging of its products. In return, Wakefield was assured a lifetime's supply of Nestle chocolate.

Carolyn Wyman, who wrote 'The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie Book', however, contests this origin narrative. According to Wyman, Wakefield had already been serving a nut butterscotch cookie and conceived of the idea of a chocolate chip cookie on a flight back from Egypt.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Ever

If you want to create chewy chocolate chip cookies, you can skip the chips. Instead, use a combination of milk or dark and semisweet chunks of chocolate.

Also, allow the dough to rest overnight or even longer for a toffee-like flavor.

Using an ice-cream scooper, moreover, will help you in creating cookies that are evenly sized every single time. These little tidbits ensure that your cookie is textured on the outside and gooey on the inside.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Ingredients

This chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe is extremely easy. The cookies can be cooked in just around 20 minutes and supply a substantial amount of nutrients and energy per serving. Accordingly, as far as Food Nutrition is concerned, every serving gives you 34g of carbohydrates, 23g of sugar, 14g of fat, 3g of protein, 1g of fiber, and 273 calories of energy. Here are the ingredients required for making 12 cookies-

• 1/2 cup (100g) of granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon of salt
• 3/4 cup (165g) of packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup (115g) of melted unsalted butter
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 1/4 cups (155g) of all-purpose flour
• 4 ounces (110g) of milk or semi-sweet chocolate chunks
• 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda
• 4 ounces (110g) of dark chocolate chunks

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cooking Steps

1. Whisk the salt, sugars, and butter together in a big bowl to form a paste. Ensure that the paste is not lumpy.
2. Whisk in the vanilla and egg. Beat until light ribbons start falling off the whisk, remaining for a short while before dropping into the mixture again.
3. Sift in the baking soda and flour. Use a spatula to fold the mixture. Avoid overmixing so that the gluten in the all-purpose flour does not toughen and create cakier cookies.
4. Fold in the chunks of chocolate. Chill the dough for half an hour. Chill the dough overnight to get a deeper color and an intense toffee-like flavor. The longer the dough is allowed to rest the better.
5. Get the oven preheated to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Take a baking sheet and line it with parchment paper.
6. Scoop the dough onto the prepared baking sheet. Leave at least four inches of space between the cookies and two inches of space from the pan edges. This would allow the cookies to spread evenly.
7. Bake for about 12 to 15 minutes, or till the cookie edges start to barely brown.
8. Cool the cookies completely and then serve.

Tips and Tricks

Use a combination of dark chocolate and milk. Dark chocolate works really well to offset the cookie's sweetness. Milk and dark chocolate in a 30-70 ratio is ideal.

Bring the butter and eggs to room temperature an hour before baking. The ingredients blend easily at room temperature unlike pie dough, which requires cold butter to make a flakier crust.

Take some time to chop chocolate bars to create your own chocolate chips. Chopped chocolate results in attractive chocolate pools, and you can also control the size of your chocolate chunks. These chunks can be irregular in size, which will give them a homemade feel.

While brown sugar gives a toffee-like flavor, brown butter has a degree of nuttiness, which adds another delicious layer of taste to the cookies. Allow the brown butter to cool for around 10 minutes before adding it to the cookie dough.

The cookie dough needs to rest in the refrigerator or the freezer for 8-48 hours. A 2-inch cookie scooper may be used to scoop the dough onto the baking sheet before storing it. This ensures that the cookies will be the same size.

Before commencing the baking process, sprinkle some flaky salt on the dough.

You may make use of the pan-banging technique (popularized by food blogger Sarah Kieffer). As part of this technique, the cookie sheet tray needs to be banged every few minutes against the counter as the baking goes on. This would deflate the cookies and help in creating a soft cookie center and uniquely crinkled edges.

Don't bake the cookies all at the same time. Instead, store the additional scooped dough in the freezer so that extra cookies can be baked when required.

The Cooking Temperature may vary between 300 F and 425 F, but usually, a temperature range of 375 F - 350 F is enough to produce evenly baked cookies. A lower baking temperature means that the cooking time required will be longer and you'll have crisper and thinner cookies. A temperature of 375 F is ideal for making the most delicious, gooey chocolate chip cookies.

How to Check if Your Chocolate Chip Cookies are Done

If you are preparing a batch of light cookies, check if the cookie edges have a golden hue. This will tell you if your cookies are done and can be removed from the oven.

Cookies that contain small quantities of flour like Fudge Ecstasies are done when the top starts to have a cracked-open look.

During the baking process, the cookie dough flattens and assumes a glossy appearance, which is an indicator of melting dough. The cookies are good to go when their sheen disappears and their structure solidifies.

Solid and golden brown bottoms also indicate that the cookies are done. All you need to do is lift about three cookies (one on either end and one in the middle of the cookie sheet) with a spatula and check the bottom. This will give you a better idea of whether all the cookies on every part of the sheet are done.

You can check the doneness of your cookies by gently poking the edge of one of the cookies. If the cookie falls inwards, you'll need to bake the cookies for more minutes.

Furthermore, you can check if your cookies are done by using the toothpick method, where you poke a toothpick into the cookie center and pull it out. If gooey batter sticks to the toothpick, the cookies are not done yet.

You can also use a food thermometer to determine if your cookies are ready. For this, you need to know the temperature at which cookies get baked. Chocolate chip cookies are usually baked between 175 F and 185 F. You can get the precise doneness you prefer with this foolproof method.

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