Today on The Stay At Home Chef
I'm showing you how to make Rachel's Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies.
To me the perfect chocolate chip cookie has to be buttery, soft, and just a little bit chewy.
Chocolate chip cookies just so happen to be the recipe that got me into cooking,
and I've become famous for my chocolate chip cookies,
so i'm excited to share them with you today.
Start by preheating your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
Then you'll want to line two baking sheets with parchment paper,
or a silicone baking mat, or you can spray it with non-stick cooking spray.
If you use non-stick cooking spray just note that the bottoms of your cookies will be just a little more greasy than if you had used parchment paper,
but it totally works either way.
The cookie dough starts with 1 cup of softened salted butter.
Then you'll need 1 cup of brown sugar, and you can use light brown sugar or dark brown sugar,
and 1/2 cup of granulated sugar.
Use a hand mixer or stand mixer to cream this all together.
It takes about 90 seconds to 2 minutes of mixing to get that mixture nice and creamy and smooth.
If you use unsalted butter for this,
you'll want to add in an additional 1/4 teaspoon of salt later when we add that in.
Next we'll add in our wet ingredients starting with 2 eggs,
and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract for a good strong vanilla flavor.
Mix this in until just combined, which will take about 30 seconds.
You're just looking for it to be smooth and well combined.
Then add in 1 teaspoon of baking soda,
and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.
Now I like to just mix this in for like 5 seconds or so, just to make sure that that gets distributed before i add in the flour.
You'll need 2 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour,
and you can dump all of that in at the same time,
no need to gradually mix it in,
but you will want to mix this on a low speed to start, so that you don't have the flour dust your kitchen and go everywhere.
It only takes 1 minute or 2 to mix this in, but you're looking for that smooth cookie dough
that can hold its shape and it's not too sticky, but it may stick to your fingers just a little bit.
you can go ahead and ditch the hand mixer and swap it out for a rubber spatula
because it's time to add in the chocolate chips.
Now you can use semi-sweet or milk chocolate.
Either will work it's just a matter of personal taste preference.
One standard size bag of chocolate chips is 12 ounces or about 2 cups,
so go ahead and pour that in.
Then use the rubber spatula to go ahead and stir that in.
Takes a little bit of muscle because your cookie dough should be nice and thick.
You want to mix those in until fairly evenly distributed.
Next grab a cookie scoop or you can just use a spoon, and we're going to start portioning out our dough.
Then go ahead and place each portion onto your prepared baking sheet.
This recipe makes 24 cookies,
so you can just eyeball it or you could even weigh it all out and measure it so they're exactly the same size if you really want.
Now at this point you could pop this tray directly into the freezer and freeze the dough balls whole just like this.
Once they're all frozen solid you can transfer them to a plastic freezer bag and freeze them for long term storage.
that way you can pop them out of the freezer and bake them just 1 or 2 at a time.
You just need to add on about 3-4 minutes onto your baking time, or you can just bake them all right now,
but there is a little trick.
You don't have to do this but if you like your cookies to be just a little bit thicker,
what you can do is pop your tray into the fridge for just about 10-15 minutes so the butter can harden up.
This way your cookies will spread less during baking and you'll get a little bit of a thicker cookie.
When you're ready go ahead and bake these in the 350 degree oven for about 10-12 minutes.
You're looking for just the faintest hint of golden brown on top.
You don't want to over bake these otherwise they'll dry out and be a little bit crispy and unpleasant.
We'll go ahead and pull these out so you can take a closer look.
You can see the kiss of brown just happening right along the edge here.
that's usually where it's easiest to spot.
They have a little bit of a dome when they first come out of the oven.
We're gonna let these cool on the pan for about 3-5 minutes.
After 3-5 minutes we'll transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.
You can use a spatula for this or you can be wild and crazy like me and pull them right off.
Let these cool off for about another 10 minutes before you try and dig in.
Now I love a good warm chocolate chip cookie as much as the next person,
but if you try and eat them too early they will fall apart.
So wait about 10 minutes, I promise they'll still be warm and delicious.
As they cool off they'll deflate and get those characteristic wrinkled circles around the edges that will swirl up into the middle.
Then grab a glass of cold milk because you are ready to eat.
Thanks for watching.
You can find the full written recipe in the video description.
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