The Quest for the Perfect Cookie

It’s Monday! Today, I’ve got cookies on my mind, so I decided I might as well do a post about them…

One of my all-time favorite things to eat is a really good chocolate chip cookie. Not just any cookie will do. No, it must be baked just right, ooey, gooey, in the middle, loaded with chocolate chips, semi-sweet or dark chocolate preferred. Peanut butter chips are a welcome addition.

In all the years I’ve been married, keeping our freezer stocked with chocolate chip cookies has been fairly important. My husband likes at least one of these in his lunch every day. And he seems to prefer the recipe I’ve used for a long time, which happens to be the same one his mom uses. 🙂

I really do like this recipe. It’s a hard one to beat! The only change I make to the recipe linked above is to add equal amount of peanut butter chips instead of the nuts. And yet…something inside me says that there just maybe, might be a better version out there somewhere….and so I keep searching.

Here’s a picture of these….and I will just add, I took this picture today. These cookies are not freshly baked. (sadly, my cookies will never win any beauty contests….I use a medium size cookie scoop, and just kind of round it off…so they’re never completely, perfectly round or anything…the important thing here is that they taste a certain way!

We have a firm belief in storing cookies in the freezer. Then, when you want to eat one, you let it thaw, either on the counter, or else by popping it into the microwave for 20 seconds, and then it will basically be like eating a hot, fresh cookie. (I couldn’t do a post about cookies without including any pictures, right?!) My basic tip for these cookies is to NOT overbake. I like to bake them for 9 minutes at 375. (The cookies really do not look done at this point, but if you leave them in until they do look completely baked, then that is just a bit too hard for our personal preference) I’ve also learned that it’s best if the dough is refrigerated before baking the cookies. Mine turn out much better if the dough has chilled for several hours. My kitchen has a habit of heating up rather quickly when we’re baking, and if the dough isn’t refrigerated, my cookies will spread out too much and just get completely flat.

After my oven timer goes, I take the cookie sheets out of the oven and let them cool on hot pads on the counter for just a few minutes before taking the cookies off. Then, I put them on wax paper to finish cooling completely.

With pinterest and the entire internet at our fingertips, there is no lack for recipes to be tried. Some sound very promising, but upon being tested….well, they just don’t quite deliver.

To date, I have found one other recipe that is also very good…This one uses butter as the shortening. It also has walnuts, which are ok, but in my opinion don’t necessarily add a lot to the final results. I’m not sure if this one will be able to be a substitute for our family favorite or not, I think I might be the only one that likes these better than the others.