PART 1.
This is what my husband calls the most sacred of all the cookies and he will jump head over heels to help me with dishes and kitchen tasks, if I make them.
I've been making chocolate chip cookies for nearly 12 years and what you use and how mix the ingredient together really effect the way they turn out. It's science.
Before we get started let talk about the method of making them and all of the ingredients.
Here is my two favorite mixing methods.
1. Pastry knife:
This is the best method ever, because instead of pulverizing the butter with a food processor as you add the other ingredients and end up with a fine bread crumb consistency. Instead you get nice uneven piece's that are spread out thought the batter.
Note: Make sure the pastry knife has good blades and not rounded.
2. Hand held electric beaters.
This method is very nice to, because the blades are rounded and very open. So when you cream the butter and add the rest of the ingredients they mix together very well and you still can see the little buttery clumps incorporated thought out the mixture.
BUTTER:
The butter is very important. And yes the better quality butter is going to be the best. Stay away from margarine butter or any butter that is sold in tubs, because they are too oily. Try to get butter that is sold in squares or blocks. And yes butter can be very expensive, so here is what I do. I only make chocolate chip cookies when I can afford the butter I like. The brand of butter that I like is called Kerry Gold.
CHOCOLATE CHIPS:
Look for chocolate chip that have no wax additives and use real vanilla. Look at the packaging. It will say real vanilla on the package, if it does not, do not use it. Well you can use it, but to get the best possible chocolate chips you want to try to use good ingredients. Guittard is the best brand and has the best flavor and tastes like real vanilla, which it is. I know because I make my own home made vanilla extract.
HOME MADE VANILLA EXTRACT:
Once you make home made vanilla extract their is no going back to store brands. And you'll be able to taste how bad the store brands are. Store brands have a lot of additives and unsavory things to mimic vanilla. Fresh vanilla extract is something extra special to add to your cookie recipe. How ever it is quite expensive for the beans and the vodka. But oh so worth it. I tend to wait a long time to get everything together, but once I do their a big smile on my face.
Recipe:
5 whole vanilla beans split down the middle all the way, then cut them in half.
2 cups of vodka.
1 glass jar with tight fitting lid.
Put the cut vanilla bean into glass jar, fill with vodka and cap off.
Put in dark place and shake once a day for a full month. Whalla Pure Vanilla Extract.
The more vanilla beans you put into the glass jar the stronger the extract will be. I'm going to be making a big bottle soon using 10 vanilla beans and 4 cups of vodka.
EGGS:
Eggs are totally up to your preference. Big, small, medium, brown or white. It does not matter. I've use organic, grass fed, and generic. I can't tell the difference. However use to large eggs, two medium eggs and if you want three small eggs. This is what I do.
FLOUR:
I tend to have the best results with one cup bread flour and one cup all purpose flour. But generally stick to what you are use to. Their are tons of other flours to try, and believe me I have, but you have to be really careful. I will talk about this in another post, but for right now were sticking to traditional chocolate chip cookies.
BAKING POWDER:
This is pretty straight forward. Use a brand you like.
SUGARS:
Now their are a lot of different type of grades of white and brown sugars. If you can get your hand on a better quality please do. If you can't use Dark brown sugar and regular white sugar. If you want to use something other than sugar like Splenda or Stevia your cookies will be good, but the other sugars are better for traditional chocolate chip cookies.
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