The first recipe that I ever had memorized was for Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies. I am not sure when I made my first batch solo, but I do remember coming home with friends after school many days and baking these cookies wherever we were. To me, there is nothing quite like a warm chocolate chip cookie.
Over the years I have tried many different recipes and variations on chocolate chip cookies. I must have dozens clipped in a file or pinned on my Pinterest board. I know I am not alone in trying to find THE perfect recipe.
Follow Kat MacArthur’s board Chocolate Chip Cookies on Pinterest.
I have seen a few different posts recently with very scientific approaches to how to bake the best chocolate chip cookie. Handle the Heat has a series of four posts using the Toll House recipe as a control recipe and then varying it slightly. The Food Lab on Serious Eats also did a series of experiments to learn about “The Science of the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies”. There is even someone who posted a YouTube video featuring the “Cookie Perfection Machine”, a machine built to allow this man to experiment with small batches of different recipes in his search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Though I will not be building any machines, I am starting a series of posts about my quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie.
What is the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie?
Over the next few months I will be posting and evaluating different recipes for chocolate chip cookies. Part of the inspiration for this series came from a recent article in The Boston Globe, “How Toll House recipe became a cookie-jar staple”, that describes the origins of the famed classic from Whitman, Massachusetts. This article also alerted me to a book that I was so excited about that we gave a copy away! Carolyn Wyman’s The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie Book is part cookbook, part food history, and part travel guide. It is a lot of fun and we were delighted to share a copy with our lucky winner – CONGRATS!
The Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie
To kick off my series of recipes, I begin with the classic, the recipe to which I always seem to return. The Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is easy to put together and always reliable. The cookies are generally a bit puffy, crisp on the outer edge, and chewy in the center. They are a good balance of the buttery caramel and chocolate flavors most chocolate chip cookies have. I made the recipe as printed on the back of the package of chocolate chips, but generally I prefer to use one full cup of brown sugar and one-half cup of white sugar to enhance the caramel flavor. No matter how you make them, these are always a treat.
Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies
This is the recipe that became an American classic, the Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie by Ruth Wakefield.
Ingredients
- 2¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup butter softened
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- ¾ cup packed brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 2 cups chocolate chips (12-ounce package)
- 1 cup nuts chopped, optional
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
- Whisk together flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl.
- Cream butter, white sugar, brown sugar, and vanilla in mixer.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- Gradually mix in flour mixture.
- Stir in chocolate chips (and nuts) by hand.
- Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.
- Bake for 9 to 11 minutes or until golde
- Cool on baking sheets for 2 minutes; transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
Recipe Notes
This recipe was very slightly adapted from the original. I never put nuts in my chocolate chip cookies (to my father's displeasure) and have listed them as optional here. For a more chewy and caramel-flavored cookie, increase the brown sugar to one cup and decrease the granulated sugar to one-half cup.
