Soft & Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
This recipe is inspired by my friend Rachel. Everyone in our neighborhood goes nuts for Rachel's chocolate chip cookies! However, no one can do it just like Rachel. So, I did some tweeks and came up with this version.
Servings: 60
Equipment
- Mixer
- Mixing Bowl
- Scale
- Measuring Cups
- Measuring Spoons
Ingredients
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 Tbsp baking soda + 1 teaspoon baking soda (leveled spoons) 36 g total
- 6½ cups flour, dip and leveled method *943g
- 2 cups unsalted butter **close to room temperature
- 1½ cups white sugar 300g
- 1½ cups light brown sugar firmly packed, 320g
- 4 eggs
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 4 cups chocolate chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F
- In a separate bowl, combine dry ingredients: salt, baking soda, and flour. Whisk together & set aside.
- Cut butter into pieces (about 2 Tbsp each) and place in the mixing bowl. You can use either a hand held mixer or KitchenAid. I use a KitchenAid and power it on 2. If using a hand held mixer, set the speed on 3.
- After a few seconds, add the white sugar, and brown sugar. Mix until creamy. Do not overmix.
- Add vanilla extract & the eggs. Beat on low speed until just incorporated, about 10-15 seconds or so. Look at pictures in the blog above to see what it should look like. (If you beat the eggs for too long, the cookies will be stiff.)
- While mixing on low, add the dry ingredients: flour, baking soda, & salt mixture. Mix until crumbles form.
- Wash your hands or use gloves for this...Use your hands to press the crumbles together into a dough. It should form a huge ball. This stage is between wet and dry dough. Not too grainy from the sugar and not too stiff from the flour.
- Add the chocolate chips and mix them in with your hands. (This prevents you from overmixing. Overmixing will make your cookies flat like pancakes.)
- Place rounded tablespoons of cookie dough directly onto the cookie sheet.
- Bake for 9-11 minutes until slightly golden brown. Do not overbake. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes.
Notes
Advice Tips: Preheat your oven with a thermometer for at least 20-minutes to ensure more even baking. Also, this will give you more of an accurate reading on the thermometer after 20 minutes.
Rachel does 1 cup of salted butter and 1 cup of shortening in her version. If you use shortening, it comes out more smooth, like the texture when you add lotion to your skin. She also adds the last cup of flour slowly to make sure it's not too wet or not too dry. Definitely look at the photos to see if your dough mixture is looking the same as the photos. Always read a recipe all the way through before you start to bake. (C'mon, that's what they really pound in us while watching "The Great British Bake Off.")
*A cup of flour that is dip & leveled (145g) versus spooned into a cup (121g) will make a HUGE difference. This particular recipe calls for dipping your cup into the flour, and then level it off with a knife. I like to weigh my flour to get consistent results.
**To get close to room temperature butter: pull out the butter from the fridge and microwave it for about 12-20 seconds. Each microwave varies. You want the butter to be barely soft. Or if you'd rather not microwave the butter, pull out the butter from the fridge and let it sit out for 30-40 minutes. Again, you want the butter to be barely soft.
This recipe makes a lot of cookies, so you can half it!