Favouritest favourite chewy chocolate chip cookies [Recipe in pictures]

I know I know, another recipe post, but isn't there something delicious about watching a recipe come together without having to actually cook it?! Or is that just me? After this, you probably are going to actually cook it anyway. Come on now, it's the weekend! Pretty much.

MMMMMMMMMM these are only the most delicious cookies I've ever made.

I'm a bit of a connoisseur of the humble chocolate chip. Read: I'm so fussy about cookie perfection that it took me like 10 years to find this recipe and now I'm done with all cookie recipes because this is my go-to forever and ever amen.

It's crispy on the outside, chewy in the middle, spreads out whilst cooking and gets that crinkly top that only the finest brown-sugar-and-melted-butter cookies get.

And it feeds quite the crowd - I made 28 medium-large cookies with this recipe. 

Let's get crackin.

A big ol' slab o' butter.

(Technically: 170gm or "one-and-a-half sticks" if you are American)

Melted in the microwave. None of this dicing business, just melt the whole brick, my friends.

Good enough.

Now dump in 1 cup of brown sugar and half a cup of white.

Mix mix mix in your cake mixer. Or with your really, really buff arms and a wooden spoon, if you are brave and/or ripped (not I).

Add the egg (and the extra egg yolk if you are feeling less stingey than me. It still works with only one egg - but the extra yolk in the recipe makes them richer and possibly even delicious-er.).... and the rather large amount of vanilla extract (1 tablespoon) that makes it so good.

Appetising or what.

Let your food mixer beat this a bit until it's nice and glossy looking like so.

Now biff (technical term: sift / measure / incorporate) in your 2 cups of flour, 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. You only need to sift, if your baking soda is actually caked up, in my rather reckless experience. So, no sifting here.

Mix it on slow until it's just incorporated...

Mmmm. Kill me now.

Actually now.

Wait, now.

That's 2 cups (give or take! 2 cups is a lot!) of milk chocolate drops I'm talkin' bout. Dark is nice too... or better yet, a mix of half dark and half white like I made here.

You can smell the deliciousness a mile away. It's vanillary chocolate-chip glory that would easily rival any "Mrs Higgins" cookie place you should innocently walk past on lambton quay blowing eau' de' cookie your way and forcing you to buy a great-smelling but debatably less-great-tasting greasy brown paper bag of cookie.

I use this nifty cookie scooper from Moore Wilson's that I'm fairly certain is actually an icecream scoop. What can I say. #expert

Space them nice and far apart, flatten them a teeny bit with your hand, and if you want to be fancy, plop some extra chocolate chips (or drops in this case) on the top.

For me, I bake these in a moderate oven (just slightly under 180c) for only 8-9 minutes. They are even better if only done for 7 minutes. Now, maybe my oven is abnormally hot because the original recipe I stole all this from said 15-17mins. So I'd say just take them out when they're looking slightly browned like so:

(I squeezed the last cookie dough ball into this gap on the tray so they are all quite friendly in this pic):

Cool them on a cooling sheet if you have one, and watch that crinkly top become a little more crinkly and horribly tempting for someone like me who actually can't eat any of these ingredients and is just torturing themself for the sake of a blog post and being able to give cookies to friends.

*sigh*

Enjoy!

Here's the more recipe-ish recipe, adapted from Allrecipes.com.au

Ingredients 

Makes: ~28 cookies

2 cups plain flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

170g unsalted butter, melted

1 cup packed brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 cups chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 175 degrees C. Grease baking trays or line with baking paper.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg and egg yolk until light and creamy, then add the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt) until just blended. Lastly, gently stir in the chocolate chips. Drop cookie dough 1 large teaspoon (like a smallish ping-pong ball size) at a time on to the baking trays. Cookies should be about 8cm apart. Flatten slightly and top with more chocolate chips if desired.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned. Remove from oven and allow to cool on trays for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.