How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies

For children, of all ages, there's nothing like a freshly baked batch of chocolate chip cookies and a nice big glass of milk to make everything seem better.
Just the aroma of them baking when you walk into the house stretches a smile across one's face.
So, you want to learn how to master that magical art of making chocolate chip cookies?

Ingredients
Mixing
Baking

Ingredients

The best part about chocolate chip cookies is nothing is completely carved in stone. I will give you the basic recipe and give you a few hints on how to vary baking your cookies, but the experimenting to perfect your cookies is all up to you.

3 cups (375 g) flour
1 tsp. baking soda
3 /4 tsp. salt
1 1/3 cups (305 g) butter, softened
1 1 /4 cups (250 g) sugar
1 cup (220 g) light brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
4 tsp. vanilla extract
1 pkg. (12 oz. / 340 g) chocolate chips

Mixing

Prior to throwing everything in a bowl go ahead and turn on your oven to 375°F (190°C) so that by the time you are done mixing and placing the first batch on the cookie sheet you can pop them directly in the oven.

In one mixing bowl you are going to want to toss all your dry powders, in no particular order. You can simply pour your flour, baking soda, and salt into the bowl and just mix it up real well.

In another bowl pour all your wet ingredients, butter, sugars, eggs and vanilla, and beat them until they are creamy.

Next slowly pour into the creamy batter the contents of the dry powder bowl and continue to mix until the batter is well blended. Then stir in the chocolate chips!!

The quantity of ingredients should make approximately 5 dozen (60) cookies. If that is too many or not enough simple increase or decrease the ingredients proportionally.

Baking

Now let's bake them! In theory you want a small ball of cookie dough about one inch, 2.5 centimeters, in diameter around two inches, five centimeters, apart. Since most people will not have an oven large enough or even enough cookie sheets to bake the entire batch of batter at one time, I would suggest to place a piece of waxed paper or aluminum foil on the cookie sheet to bake upon. Now when one batch is done baking you can quickly slide the baked cookies off the cookie sheet to cool, and then place another sheet of waxed paper or aluminum foil to begin placing the next batch of cookies to be baked. You will need to bake the cookies at the pre-heated temperature, 375°F (190°C), for approximately 8 to 10 minutes.

The longer you cook them the dryer and crunchier the cookies will be. The shorter you bake them the moister and chewier they will be. Have fun with it. Remember, unless you burn the cookies to a crisp they are never ruined, the cookie dough can be eaten raw, plus you can always put the cookies back in the oven if they are too soft.