Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie (Redux)

I originally posted this recipe in August 2013 but I’m posting it again.

These cookies are amazing. They are the kind of cookie that people ask you to make over and over again, and I have. Unfortunately, the original recipe has gotten a bad rap and I’m hoping to fix that here. I love this recipe so much that it’s worth trying again.

The secret of success for this recipe is a very easy. Measure the flour correctly. Yup, that’s it, folks. To measure flour correctly, use a spoon to loosely pile the flour into a measuring cup and then level it off with a butter knife.

Measuring flour incorrectly is one of the most common mistakes that people make in baking. If you don’t use enough flour then you’re cookies will spread into flat greasy disks. If you smash the measuring cup right into the flour container then you are using too much flour and your cookies will come out crumbly, dense, and dry.

When I’m following someone’s recipe I’m not always sure if they measure the flour correctly or not and that’s frustrating because I know that the amount of flour can make or break a recipe. This is especially true with baking. In my efforts to make it clear how I measure my flour, I actually used to use a little warning icon next to the flour. That didn’t work. Then with the advice of my husband and Alton Brown, I decided that I had to start to include weight measurements for flour. That way, no matter how anyone fills their measuring cups, there is a “correct” amount available that never changes.

If you don’t own a kitchen scale, I highly suggest buying one. The first one we ever had in my house was just purchased at the grocery store for something like $10. It was digital and got the job done. After many years of service the most serious limitation of the grocery store model became apparent. It just didn’t have a high enough weight limit. This is important when you need to tare the scale with a heavy bowl on it. I often found that my large Pirex bowls would successfully zero out on the scale, but then would overload the scale with almost nothing in them.

The solution, once the $10 one stopped working properly, was to buy this Ozeri kitchen scale. For just less than $20 we got a scale with an obscene 18 pound capacity, no cracks or crevices to get various food bits stuck in, and a clear and well lit digital display with four or five different units of measurement available. It’s awesome and ours works like the day we got it over three years ago (though I believe we did have to replace the batteries in there somewhere).

If you don’t want to buy a scale then I can’t be held responsible for how your cookies turn out (seriously, get a scale). 🙂 If you refuse to get a scale, simply make sure to use the “spoon and scoop” method that I mentioned above and on my Baking 101 page.

I hope that I’ve set the record straight now because these chocolate chips cookies are a favorite of ours. If you’ve tried to make the recipe from 2013 and it was a failure then I hope you are willing to try it again. If you never saw the original post then you’re in for a doozy of a delicious cookie. 🙂

Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
(Makes 12 ginormous sized cookies)
Note: The dough needs to be chilled for 3 hours in the refrigerator.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup (equivalent to 1 stick) butter, room temperature
1/4 cup shortening
3/4 cups dark brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup white sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (equivalent to 10.5 ounces)
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:

In a large bowl, mix the butter, shortening, brown sugar, and white sugar, until light and fluffy.
Mix in the eggs and vanilla. Set the wet ingredients aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt.
Gradually mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, until combined.
Stir in the miniature chocolate chips until evenly distributed.
Chill the dough for 3 hours.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Line a baking sheet with a silicon mat or parchment paper.
Fill a 1/4 cup measuring cup with dough, scoop it out, form it into a ball, then slightly flatten it with the bottom of the measuring cup. Four cookies per tray.
Bake them in the preheated oven for 15 minutes.
Let them rest for about 3 minutes and remove them to a cooling rack.