the one wear i actually make chocolate chip cookeis

Devin and I had been avoiding grocery shopping for a solid 2 weeks. The lack of food in our house was almost comical, but we did finally go a few nights ago. It wasn't really a pain to have no food in the house, because we had some staples like chicken and rice, but finding snacks to take to work got annoying, and it got really bad when we ran out of Rice Chex: the main ingredient for muddy buddies. We both have a pretty huge sweet tooth and have dessert after almost every meal we make at home, and that's usually muddy buddies. Okay, it's always muddy buddies. So when we finished off that box of cereal, we went 2 or 3 nights with no dessert. It was a travesty, I tell you.

The thought crossed my mind that we had pantry staples, and I could probably very easily bake something, but... meh. My real craving was for a big, perfect chocolate chip cookie. And this makes me laugh. Because I could be the freaking covergirl for how NOT to make chocolate chip cookies. I can make every kind of cookie. Chocolate Peanut Butter Surprise? Easy. Snickerdoodle? No problem. French Macaron? I'm your girl. But Chocolate Chip and I have just never seen eye to eye. I fail so miserably. Every. Single. Time. Recipes? I've tried the lot of them. I can barely manage to make edible chocolate chip cookies from store bought dough! It's very ridiculous, and i'm sure, entertaining.

But then, there was a miracle. One afternoon last week, while I was waiting for my lunch break, feeling really hungry, still craving that chocolate chip cookie (almost subconsciously, though, really). I found it. I happened upon a recipe for them by accident and read through the entire post. They're the "Chewy Chocolate Chunk Cookies" from Sally's Baking Addiction (amazing, amazing blog) and she lists every step in detail, and explains why each step is important and how it works. I think that's what made the difference for me! She had so many awesome tips, so feel free to click on the link, otherwise, I will just list the recipe below with my own photos, proof that they worked!

My problem with chocolate chip cookies was the spreading. The dough was always a great consistency and tasted good, but once those babies came out of the oven, they were spread paper thin, really greasy-looking, and a horrible shade of brown. The always always always looked this way. Every recipe. Every time. No matter what.

What I love about this recipe are all of her tips to counter the spreading. Extra ingredients like the cornstarch and extra egg yolk make the dough a little thicker, and techniques like making the dough balls taller than they are wide help the cookies bake thick and tall, instead of thin and flat. All of those things made a world of difference! I think making sure to pull them out of the oven just slightly underbaked was key, too. Mine did end up a little doughy in the middle, but I think I made my dough balls too big, because some of mine came out like 2 inches thick! Delicious, though. The melted butter trick is still a mystery to me. I don't know why or how it works, but it does, and I'm sure it made a difference, too.

Anyway, the point is that I tried them (which was a pretty big leap of faith!), and it worked! I've broken the curse!

Ingredients:

2 and 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, spoon and leveled

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 and 1/2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup (1.5 sticks) unsalted butter, melted

3/4 cup light brown sugar, loosely packed

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1 large egg + 1 egg yolk*

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 cup chocolate chips or chocolate chunks

Directions:

1. Combine flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt in a large bowl. Set aside.

2. In a medium size bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar together until smooth. Whisk in the egg, then the egg yolk. Whisk in the vanilla.

3. Combine wet and dry ingredients together and mix with a large spoon or rubber spatula (no mixer needed! boo-ya!). The dough will be really soft because of the butter. Add the chocolate chips. They may not stick to the dough and mix well, but just try to spread them out evenly.

4. Cover the dough and chill for 2 hours, or up to 3 days. Chilling the dough is a must!

5. Take the dough out of the refrigerator and let it sit for 10 minutes to thaw a little bit.

6. Preheat the over to 325F degrees. Line two large baking sheets.

7. Roll the dough into balls, about 2 Tablespoons of dough each. The dough will be crumbly, using your hands to roll the dough will warm it up and allow it to stick a little better.. Roll the cookie dough balls to be taller than they are wide (make them oblong shaped, almost like an egg), to make sure the cookies will be thick. Put 8 balls of dough onto each cookie sheet.

8. Bake the cookies for 11-12 minutes. The cookies will look very mushy and they won't look done. Don't bake longer than 12 minutes though. They will keep baking on the cookie sheet when you take them out of the oven.

9. Allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely.

10. Giant glass of milk is absolutely necessary.

Notes:

*Room temperature egg + egg yolk is best. To bring eggs to room temperature fast, put the whole eggs into a glass of warm water for 10 minutes.