The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

I got the best chocolate chip cookie recipe when I was a sophomore in college.  My best friend had a "date" at our apartment, attended by all of us roommates.  Poor guy.  How do you truly take a girl out when you are a poor, struggling student?  He wanted to make her the "best cookies ever!" but didn't have anything to make them with.  Thus, the date at our apartment.  I have to say--he didn't last in the annals of time, but his recipe and claim to fame did.  They are YuMmY!









The BEST Chocolate Chip Cookies
1/2 cup butter-flavored Crisco (or regular shortening, in a pinch)
1/2 cup softened butter
2 eggs
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 T vanilla (the real stuff)
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 bag good chocolate chips


Mix the butter and shortening together in the mixer first.  Then add the sugars and give it a good mix.  Then add the eggs; mix it up a little more.  I add the salt, soda, and vanilla into the "wet" batter and mix a little.  Then add the flour.  Finish off the recipe by adding the chocolate chips.  Semi-sweet are fabulous if you want a traditional chocolate chip cookies.  I like to mix half a bag of milk chocolate and half a bag of semi-sweet into the dough.  Nuts are optional, and work really well in this recipe if you're a nut-lover.  Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Bake for 8-9 minutes...no longer.  That's the trick to a really soft and delicious cookie--no over baking!

I like using the ice-cream scoop to get a uniform shape in the cookies.  The Cash-n-Carry stores have a variety of different sized scoops.  I used a smaller scoop, but the cookies still at least 2" in diameter.

                         
The texture is divine and the experience is complete with a glass of COLD milk! [I like to improvise and introduce "healthier" options to my old favorites.  Usually nobody can tell the difference in what I did, and this time was no different.  This time I replaced a 2/3 cup of the all-purpose flour with Oat Flour.  The cookies had a little more texture in the dough, and once baked, were still amazing.]