New American - Good Old Chocolate Chip

Grab a glass of milk for this one. I always had a sense that chocolate chip cookies of a certain type were all the same. But the chocolate chip cookies August and I just made, from New American Cooking cookbook, were just over-the-top rich. Insanely, overwhelming rich. Making it possible for me to stop at one. Wise, even. Todd said he thought it might be the best chocolate chip cookie ever.

I've tried many, many chocolate chip cookie recipes, and I always fall in love with them. (Clearly not enough to be faithful, but still.) And I have rarely enjoyed a purchased chocolate chip cookie as much as the ones I make myself, regardless of the recipe I use. I do prefer the soft, chewy variety, with a good edge of salt and a reasonable amount of chocolate chips.

I made a half-recipe, 12 big cookies: Cream 1/2 cup softened butter with 6 tablespoons each white and brown sugar (other recipes I've used use all brown, and these were lighter in color and flavor), then add one egg and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla. Mix in 1 1/4 cup flour, then a generous 1/4 teaspoon baking soda and a generous 1/4 teaspoon salt. I stirred in 6 ounces of chopped chocolate from an 8-ounce bar of Nestle Chocolatier chocolate (they had sent coupons for free samples, but I couldn't find the higher percentage, only the 53%, in our grocery store). I liked the big chunks, which when warm were smooth and rich pockets of melty chocolate. Yum.

I used a 1/4 cup measuring cup, scantly filled, to measure out the cookies, then baked them in a 350 degree oven for 18 minutes.

A side note for the grandmas: August loves to taste, so I'm wary of letting him help with the dough after the egg's been added. This time he tasted the sugar-butter mixture, then I gave him the spatula I had used for that and instructed him that was his and the dough would now be off-limits, because of the egg. It worked. When I was chopping the chocolate, he was eating almost to keep up with me, so I had to move away from him to finish the chopping. I left a few chunks behind, accidentally, and he, as though he was mimicking me, said, "You can have those little pieces on the table, August."