Awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have been on a quest for the best chocolate chip cookies for a while.Â After a while I have figured out the ingredients needed to make a really good cookie.Â You need to use both butter and shortening.Â If you use all butter your cookies come out flat and crunchy.Â If you use all shortening your cookies come out fluffly but don’t spread out.Â A perfect balance of the two gives you a light and fluffy cookie that is not too thick and not too thin.

: Light fluffy with a little crisp on the edges. The perfect cookie.

Chocolate Chip Cookies – (Adapted from The Worlds Best Chocolate Chip Cookies from Chef2Chef.com)

Â 3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar
1 Cup Brown Sugar
1/2 Cup Butter
1/2 Cup Shortening
1.5 Tbs Vanilla – 1 Tbs if you are using mexican vanilla (it has a stronger flavor)
2 Eggs
3 Cups Bread Flour
3/4 tsp Baking Soda
3/4 tsp Salt – (Preferably Kosher or Fine Sea Salt)
1 Bag of Chocolate Chips

: Only takes 10 ingredients most, if not all, you have right in your pantry.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Side Note – I just want to take a minute to let you know that if you have a kitchen aid mixer you should get a beater blade.Â The original blade that comes with the mixer works great but requires that you scrape the edges of the bowl so that everything is incorporated.Â The beater blade has silicone scrapers on the edge of the blade that scrape the edges and make it so that you do not need this step.

: The best attachment I have ever bought for the kitchen aid mixer!

Back to cooking.Â Add room temperature butter, shortening, sugar and brown sugar to your bowl.Â Mix at medium speed creaming the butter and sugar.Â

: Mix until well combined usually 1-2 mins

Now add the eggs slightly beaten and the vanilla.Â Vanilla is a compliment to chocolate, so by adding the vanilla you are going to enhance the chocolate flavor.Â Who doesn’t want more chocolately chocolate.Â I know I do!

While that is mixing sift the flour and baking soda onto a piece of wax paper or parchment.Â This step can be skipped but if you want the perfect textured cookies, I recommend that you sift your flour.Â Then once your flour is sifted you can use the wax paper or parchment as a funnel to get the ingredients in the bowl.Â This makes less of a mess when incorporating flour.Â Otherwise you might end up looking like casper the friendly ghost.Â

Cheddar Cheese Scalloped Potatoes and Ham

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I used a strainer to sift the flour. It works great. No need to buy expensive equipment.

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The wax paper makes pouring the flour into the mixer easy.

Mix until the flour isÂ incorporated.Â Then fold the chocolate chips in with your favorite wooden spoon or spatula.

: Fold in the Chocolate Chips by hand.

Now portion the cookies out onto a baking sheet covered in parchment or a silpat.Â I use an ice cream scoop to portion out the cookies.Â I have found that I could get six cookies per sheet.

Using an ice cream scoop makes sure that all of the cookies are the same size.

The silpat is reusable and thus saves money in the long run.

Bake the cookies at 350 degrees for 12-14 minutes.Â Remember to take them out when they get stiff.Â If the cookies look done they are probably over done.Â That is one of the biggest mistakes most cooks make.Â An overdone cookie is a crime.