Ziay!

theent1

mall store, like Original Cookie.? Chocolate chip cookies to be exact. Soft and chewy.

musicimprovedme

You can't beat the Toll House choc chip recipe. You don't have to use their chips, any real chips will do.

I bake cookies a LOT. In fact, it is kind of a hobby. I have some tricks to make it easier.

Every recipe has it's directions on how to get the ingredients together. Forget them.

You don't have to cream fats and sugars at room temp, by the time you get to the flour the dough is so hard to stir. Instead:

Melt butter, peanut butter, etc, any fats...in the microwave until they are completely liquid. Add sugars, vanilla, soda, salt, baking powder or any tiny amounts of dry ingredients and stir the hell out of it, then it is evenly mixed in. If the mixture is still warm, let it cool a bit, then add eggs (so they don't cook, at that point you would have the beginning of scrambled eggs in your cookie dough) or temper them in (add eggs to a tiny amount of warm mix then add that to the rest of the liquids). Then add any chips, nuts, raisins, etc to the goo this way they will have something to stick to instead of falling out of the otherwise finished dough. THEN add flour. If the dough is still too soft to work with due to starting with melted ingredients, you can place cookie dough in the fridge to set up a little.

Form cookies in balls about the size of ping pong balls and flatten a little. This keeps the cookies from growing much past the size you make them, and keeps them from looking like half a dome when you are done. They will be chewy, and flat but bumpy just like the bakeries serve.

You can add a cup of peanut butter to the Nestle Toll House recipe to make a very chewy, illegally good cookie.

Other tips: For chewier gooier add less flour (a couple fewer tablespoons), bake lower temps or less time. You have to let the cookies sit a minute after you take them from the oven though because they will fall apart if you don't leave them on the cookie sheet.

Experiment with extracts other than vanilla. There is rum, root beer, almond, lemon, orange, peppermint, etc. You could also substitute liquor or liqueurs for the vanilla...

They make baking chips with STUFF in them now. Hershey's I think is who is doing this. Choc chips with macadamia nuts, rasp syrup, caramel, even tiny chip-sized peanut butter cups. Don't forget the other chips and baking bits: white chocolate, mint chocolate, peanut butter, butterscotch, cinnamon, heath, etc.

Ingredients definitely matter. Use real butter and raw sugar (turbinado sugar, granulated like table sugar but it is the color of light brown sugar). You don't have to buy brands necessarily, just make sure ingredients are real and fresh.

Lastly, you can freeze cookie dough. I do this ALLL the time. You can double or triple or otherwise multiply out a recipe, then bake off however much you want, and wrap the leftover dough in waxed paper and foil, label with baking directions, and freeze. Then you have dough waiting for you for unexpected company, prep work done for holiday baking, and an easy treat or dessert anytime you want one.