My family has been using this chocolate chip cookie recipe since I was little. I think we originally got it out of a magazine, and it’s been one of our go-to recipes for years.
Our Family’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
For best results, set out the butter and eggs on your counter for a few hours beforehand so that they can come to room temperature by the time you have to mix them in with everything else. As a rule of thumb: The butter is soft enough when you can easily squish the stick between your thumb and index finger.
Ingredients:
- ¾ cup (148 grams) white sugar
- ¾ cup (148 grams) brown sugar, packed
- 2 sticks (226 grams) unsalted butter (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Miyoko’s Vegan Butter, which I found at Target.)
- 2 eggs (Or for a vegan version, I’ve had success with Bob’s Red Mill Egg Replacer, which I found at Target.)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 ¼ cup (320 grams) flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon table salt
- 12–12.5 oz (340–355 g) dark chocolate from 70%+ bars (alternately: one 12 oz / 340 g bag of chocolate chips)
- optional: sea salt to sprinkle on top, to taste
(I prefer Maldon sea-salt flakes for sprinkling on top, but other types of sea salt can work too.)Directions:
Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
Mix together the white sugar and brown sugar. Then cream with the butter.
Add the eggs and beat well. Then add the vanilla.
In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, and table salt. Then slowly add them to the wet ingredients.
Roughly chop the dark chocolate bars. It’s fine (and even preferable) if not all the chopped pieces are the same size—aim to have most of the pieces around ½ to ¾ inch (1 to 2 cm) on any given side. Then add the chopped chocolate pieces and gently fold them in with a spatula.
Line your baking sheet(s) with parchment paper, and portion about 6 dollops of dough onto each sheet. (If you have a digital scale, aim for around 38 to 40 grams per cookie.)
Place the cookies in the oven for 5 minutes—then swap the baking sheets and continue baking for another 5 minutes. When they’re done, their tops and edges should have just started to brown.
(If the tops of the cookies are still batter-colored when your timer beeps—that is, the tops haven’t the slightest browning—put the sheets back in the oven for another 30 seconds.)
Optional: Immediately after taking the cookie sheets out of the oven, sprinkle the tops of the cookies with sea salt.
Allow the cookies to cool for 5–10 minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack.