Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

These suckers turned out gigantic (4" long!) but soo soo good. As it turns out the recipe claims it yields 18 cookies and I just made 11 (and had to cook for slightly longer than usual - usually my oven's too hot so that's really an extra maybe... 8 minutes for a regular, correctly calibrated oven).

A very quick batch with just over an hour from measuring out ingredients to eating the cookie. I definitely wish I had some milk.

Baker's Illustrated - pg. 434

2 cups + 2 tablespoons unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar (I used light - I wonder if dark would give it a less vanilla-y taste and more of a molasses-y taste..?)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 - 1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips (I used the minimum one cup and every bite was just on this side of almost too much chocolate (in other words, a perfect amount each bite) as the cookie itself was also very rich (thanks to the butter content)... however I'm not a huge chocolate lover)

1. Adjust oven racks to upper- & lower-middle positions & heat oven to 325 degrees. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper or spray them with nonstick cooking spray.

2. Whisk the flour, baking soda, & salt together in a medium bowl, set aside.

3. Either by hand or with an electronic mixer (I used the mixer with the regular non-whisk attachments), mix the butter & sugars until thoroughly blended. Beat in the egg, yolk, and vanilla until combined. Add the dry ingredients & beat & low speed just until combined. Stir in the chips to taste.

4. Roll a scant 1/4 cup of the dough into a ball (my guess is you're supposed to estimate it - I went ahead and used a 1/4 cup dry measuring cup to scoop the dough then went from there and, as I said earlier, I ended up with 7 less cookies than the recipe claimed to yield - but they were indeed humongous). Hold the dough ball with the fingertips of both hands and pull into 2 equal halves. Rotate the halves 90 degrees and, with jagged surfaces facing up, join the halves together at their base, again forming a single ball, being careful not to smooth the dough's uneven surface. Place the formed dough balls on the prepared baking sheets, jagged surface up, spacing them 2 1/2" apart.

5. Bake until the cookies are light golden brown & the outer edges start to harden yet the centers are still soft & puffy, 15 - 18 minutes (I had to fight my "it's undercooked!" instincts here. The best way to judge is when the edges are no longer soft enough to push in with your finger and there is a light golden color.. the centers will seem undercooked but they will get slightly firmer as they cool.. each chef is their own judge however.), rotating the baking sheets front to back and top to bottom 1/2 way through the baking time. Cool the cookies on the sheets. Remove the cooled cookies from the baking sheets with a wide metal spatula. (I only covered the baking pans with parchment paper and did not spray. After maybe 10 seconds of cooling the cookies were able to be picked up by hand (and eaten :P ) from the sheet.)

As you can see above they turned out super great and one cookie is more than enough but it sure is hard to fight the urge to eat more.

Have a great rest of the week and weekend!