I have been making these so long, I'm not even sure if I own a hard copy of the recipe. But this is what I always think of first--The First Five.
These five ingredients go into the mixer first. And I tick them off my mental list every time.
1 stick butter flavored shortening
2 eggs
1/2 C white sugar
1 C brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
Cream these first five together and then add:
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 1/4 C flour
Every time (and I do mean every time--that's a lot) I make these cookies, as I am measuring the flour carefully, I think back on a memory of mine when I was in high school. See these girls?
When I was in high school (probably the same age as this picture--maybe a touch older), my mom let me travel from my home town of Idaho Falls to Salt Lake City (3 hours away) with these two, Stephanie and Mindy, to spend the week at Mindy's Grandma's home to shop for school clothes. CRAZY. When I think about that I am a little stunned. As the mother of a 15-year-old, I can't believe the trust my mom (and their moms, for that matter) had in us to let us go on such an excursion--and we did it a couple times. But what a great way to spread our wings and grow up a little.
On this particular trip, we spent many hours watching Ann of Green Gables movies (how we all loved Gilbert Blythe), drinking ourselves sick with...water (because we heard, of course, that we should drink 8 glasses a day and interpreted that to mean 8 glasses, at once, at 1:00 in the morning), and baking cookies. Steph and Mindy both came from big families and had much more experience than I in the kitchen. So as we made a batch of cookies, they insisted that adding more and more flour to a cookie recipe just made them better. In the back of my rule-following mind (probably why this memory sticks out to me so often), I remember thinking that that didn't really sound right. But what did I know? I didn't have much baking experience. Well, generally, it's a good idea to stick to the recipe when it comes to adding flour to cookies. Those were terrible.
So, every time I carefully measure out 2 1/4 C flour for these cookies, I think of our Salt Lake excursion with a smile.
After those ingredients are mixed, I drop in 1 bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I like these better than the milk, which is a little too sweet for my taste.
After lining my cookie sheets with the yummy little dough balls (that sometimes don't make it to the oven if the kids are around), I bake them for exactly 8 minutes at 375 degrees. And I don't vary from this either. They look like they aren't done at 8 minutes. But I take them out anyway. I have been doing these for a long time. And every time I think I am smarter than the cookie and leave them in a little longer, they turn out hard and over done. So I stick with the 8-minute rule.
After removing them from the oven, I leave them on the pan for a few minutes to continue a last little cooking, and then I move them to the cooling rack.
Yummy! We love them at our house. I hope you like them too.
And, in case you don't want to have to write the recipe out, here it is in once place so you can print it off.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 stick butter flavored shortening
2 eggs
1/2 C sugar
1 C brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
cream and add
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
2 1/4 C flour
1 bag semi-sweet chips
375 for 8 minutes.
Enjoy!
