Cookie Monster Delights...

Today is a cold, rainy day and just perfect for hunkering down in the kitchen and making delicious treats like cookies. I'm a fickle creature - I don't actually like baked goods all that much...I'm not someone who generally craves biscuits and cakes and I can certainly resist them if they are in the house. But I am someone who is highly suggestible and I tend to be easily influenced by what I see on TV - the pretzel situation probably hinted as much. So, the cookie obsession that I have also derives from American TV shows. In NZ - and the UK for that matter - we don't really have cookies so much as biscuits. Biscuits are quite a different creature - they tend to be crispy and dry whereas cookies are often chewy, dense and much softer. In our house, cookies meet with much higher approval than biscuits tend to, and to be honest I love the idea of chewy chocolate chip cookies, fresh from the oven (as seen on TV, if you will).

I have one recipe which I tend to make when trying to achieve such a cookie, but it's not quite perfect - they are chewy-ish, but rather thin and often quite crispy. Yesterday I spent several hours searching through the seemingly infinite number of chocolate chip cookie recipes that are on the internet, and those which described themselves as chewy cookies all had one thing in common - they start with melted butter rather than creaming softened butter with sugar. This seems to be the key to the dense texture that I was after - think of brownies...they start with melted butter too and they're always chewy and delish. Anyway, there were several similar variations on this recipe, which I'm told derives from the American Test Kitchen (must acknowledge their efforts - it's a great recipe!) and it's so yummy that I just had to share it! They're certainly not a health-food with all that butter, sugar and chocolate, but frankly who cares?! You have to have indulgences in life...

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 cups plus 2 tbsp plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarb of soda
1/2 tsp salt (actually the recipe calls for added salt and the use of unsalted butter...I only ever buy salted butter, so I just left out the salt and used my normal butter...you can choose whatever method you prefer!)
170g butter, melted and set aside to cool (see above for the salted/unsalted debate)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
1-1 1/2 cups chocolate chips/chunks

- Line baking sheets with baking paper and preheat oven to 165deg (C).
- Beat butter and sugars together thoroughly. Beat in eggs and vanilla.
- Sift in mixed flour and bicarb and stir to combine. Mix in chocolate.
- Here several of the original recipes called for a bizarre shaping ritual of scooping balls of dough, splitting them in half then inverting them back onto each other. That all seems insanely complicated, so I just scooped very large dessert-spoonfuls onto the trays. Eye-ball about 1/4 cup of dough per cookie, and don't flatten them out. Leave about 2 inches between each cookie as they flatten/spread in the oven.
- Bake 15-17 mins or until the edges are lightly browned. To get the soft, chewy quality, you can't overcook these - the centres should still be soft when they are removed from the oven.
- Leave to cool on the trays not on a rack - this is the final step which ensures the soft texture.

These are large, gorgeous and completely irresistible. They're best eaten slightly warm, although they do keep a day or two...if they last that long!

The Finished Product...
You can almost sense how good they smelt fresh out of the oven...