3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 pinch salt
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown or golden sugar
1 1/3 cups melted butter or margarine
2 eggs
2 tsp cream
2 tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips or chopped chocolate chunks
If you’ve got a sweet craving to curb, here’s an easy chocolate chip cookie recipe that makes about two dozen treats—just for you or, if you’re feeling generous, to share.
The recipe is very forgiving, and it’s easy to make with on-the-fly substitutions. I use butter nowadays, but growing up my mom would make these cookies with margarine, and, really, they were just as tasty. There have been times when I ran out of white sugar, so I used raw sugar instead, or I melted too much butter, or forgot the cream. In the end I still ended up with something delicious.
The dough is great to experiment with other fillings, such as raisins, nuts, caramel, or other types of candies. This dough also does well frozen, so you can make large batches to bake later. The recipe is easy to scale up or down to make different sized batches.
The tools you’ll need for this recipe are one large bowl, one medium bowl, measuring cups and spoons, a microwave-safe glass measuring cup, a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, a whisk, baking trays, parchment paper, cooling rack, cutting board, butter knife, and two large spoons. Or, you can simply improvise.
First, make sure the oven racks are spaced one above the middle and one below the middle slot. Then, preheat the oven to 375 F. In the medium bowl, throw in the flour, baking soda, and salt, and give them a gentle mix.
In the large bowl, add the white sugar, brown or golden sugar, melted butter or margarine, eggs, cream, and vanilla extract, 2 tbsp or measured with your heart. Thoroughly mix these ingredients together.
Pour the contents of the medium bowl into the large bowl in small increments, mixing thoroughly between each increment. When everything is combined, add in the chocolate chips or chopped chocolate chunks and mix again. Get two baking trays and line them with parchment paper. Use two large spoons to scoop and shape the dough and put the dough onto the baking sheets. Put the cookies into the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes.
When done baking, let the cookies cool on a tray for a few minutes. Then transfer the cookies to a cooling rack to cool further. Then enjoy!
Here are some extra tips to make this recipe even more stress free. Beat your eggs before adding to the large bowl; doing this helps with the mixing process later on. These cookies spread quite a bit, so keep this in mind when portioning the dough onto the tray if you want a round shape. Depending on your oven, your cookies may bake unevenly; switch the baking trays on the oven racks halfway through the bake time to help prevent the bottom tray of cookies from burning. Also, depending on the size of the cookies, you may need to bake them in batches. The dough is okay to sit and rest, but make sure to cover it and put it in the fridge between baking.
There are tools involved in this recipe that you only need to use once; I recommend cleaning them when waiting for the cookies to bake so you don’t have a giant pile to do afterwards.
Next issue, we’ll be making gnocchi. It’s a budget-friendly recipe that’s a great leftover hunger buster.