My tips for the ideal chocolate chip cookies

A photo of when I baked about a million cookies for my boyfriend; half
regular, and half with Oreo add-ins

I would like to start this post by saying I am not a professional baker; I'm an amateur at best. However, I have been told by numerous people that the chocolate chip cookies I have made are the best they've ever had, so there are my credentials for this post. Though I can't take credit for the recipe, unfortunately, it was from a blog post I read months ago that I can no longer find or remember the name of. Wherever you are... thank you. My recipe has adapted since then, but the original base of the recipe and the tips in that blog post were extremely helpful to someone who hadn't baked since they were 7, and their idea of 'baking' was helping their gran grate the cheese for cheese scones. So hopefully my wisdom can be passed on to anyone reading this.

    What to buy

Whenever I make my cookies, I'll be entirely honest and say I normally use the cheapest stuff I can find. I have a Tesco ClubCard, so whichever butter is on ClubCard price, I buy (same for any other part of my recipe), or I will go to ASDA as they have the best range of items for a lower price. I can imagine Aldi prices are better, but my local Aldi doesn't have an amazing baking section compared to ASDA. Though I've never spent money on getting the more expensive ingredients, I can't imagine it would make much of a difference, and I think my cookies taste good enough that I don't care to try.

After an accidental purchase of a bag of dark chocolate and a bag of milk chocolate, rather than two milk chocolate bags, I've found that actually this combination makes the cookies taste much better - in my opinion, it makes them taste similar to Domino's cookies - and I had many saying they were the best I had made yet. So what was an annoying mistake that I thought would ruin my cookies actually improved them and has inspired me to continue to do the same in future!

Most recipes call for salted butter, but there have been a few times when I've gotten unsalted butter, as most recipes call for it, but I don't think it really makes much of a difference, as, at least for the recipe I use, I end up adding salt to it anyway, so it kind of balances out. Another thing about salt: the recipe I originally used said to use, I think, 1 tsp of salt? And whilst I enjoyed it, I had mixed opinions from everyone else who tried them, so since then I have just done a few twists of the salt grinder, normally enough to cover the surface area of the dough.

I would also say the different types of brown sugar make no difference. I think the recommended brown sugar for cookies is dark brown sugar, but I don't think there's much of a difference in my experience. This could be due to the fact I buy cheap; there may be more of a difference when you buy from more expensive brands. But I don't care enough to try; I bake for fun, not money.

I also would always see bakers using the flat-headed spatula things (see photo), and so I recently invested in one as they're quite cheap, but I'll be honest and say that I prefer using the fork overall. I find the spatula thing is efficient when mixing wet ingredients and maybe slightly more efficient when creaming the butter and sugars. But overall, I would say using a fork is just as efficient, as I end up using one anyway. I only really think the spatula thing would be efficient when baking a cake or mixing the apples and cinnamon in an apple crumble.

When I first started baking, I only had one large bowl, so I couldn't mix the dry ingredients separately, as most recipes say you should. Whilst now I do have a second, larger mixing bowl, I would say that I haven't noticed any difference in the flavour or texture before and after the switch. I don't know if I got away with it by adding all of the dry ingredients except flour first, then mixing, and after that, adding the flour in small amounts, but I would say there's no need to invest in a second large bowl if you don't want to. Though I would warn that the dough like triples in size as the flour is added, so beware of having the wet ingredients too close to the edge of the bowl.

    When actually baking

One of the things that annoys me most about baking cookies is the very first step: creaming together the sugars and butter. Especially since the butter must be softened. Something I've been doing recently is leaving the butter in the fridge (I'm from a family which normally leaves the butter in a butter dish on the kitchen bench), cutting it into small cubes (like in the photo), and leaving it to soften before beginning to bake. I still find it frustrating, but I have found it does work quite a bit better. I still hate creaming the butter and sugars.

Even in the photo there, I probably should have cut the butter into smaller chunks, but I hate the feeling of greasy fingers after touching the butter. It makes me feel so disgusting.

Another quick tip I would say is to have your brown sugar exposed to the air as little as possible. I try to flatten the top down as much as possible after opening, as I believe the reason brown sugar can end up clumping is due to the air or something? Will have to look into that at some point. Also, sometimes you may find extremely dark brown tiny clumps in your brown sugar - when I first saw these, I was worried they were dead flies or something - but they are completely normal and unnoticeable after baking.

When I bake my cookies, I never set a time - yes, it's usually between 8-12 minutes, but I use visual aids. How do I do this? Well, you want your cookie to be a similar colour to the dough in the middle, just more golden, with a browner edge. When you take them out of the oven, they will have a very doughy texture, and you may be tempted to put them back in the oven, but don't, or you'll overdo them! Unless you like to break your teeth on cookies... But after letting them sit on the tray for 5 minutes, they should take form, and then I use a proper metal spatula to move them to a cooling rack (I use a clean air fryer rack... no judgements here, please).

dough balls with added choc. chips

Something which stumped me when I first baked chocolate chip cookies was that you couldn't see the chocolate chip cookies after baking. My solution? Add them manually. When I first started baking, I would add chocolate chips individually to each of the dough balls, but this is highly time-consuming, so my new method was to take them out about halfway through, when they're flat but still liquid-y. I will attach two photos of either method; I tend to mix them now. My routine when baking is rolling the dough balls until I have both trays in the oven, then I continue to roll more dough balls until I've either done half (when I'm doing half with add-ins and by this point, I'd be doing more mixing), or until I've finished, which is when I start adding chocolate chips to the dough balls. During this process, I'm constantly checking the cookies currently in the oven to see whether they need chocolate chips added (if none were added before) or if they are done baking. This method is highly efficient for me, and whilst it isn't the best looking, it means that I can sit on the settee for the last few trays. I'll attach photos of my two 'methods', but god knows how Blogger will end up arranging them.

Please note that when I do the method of adding them part-way through baking, I take them fully out of the oven. Be super careful about touching the dough and the chocolate chips after they've touched the dough/tray, as I have once been burnt getting a bit of melted chocolate stuck under my nail that I couldn't rinse off in time. It hurt so much because of where it was! So make sure just to kind of drop your chocolate chips wherever, and be careful if they fall off a cookie and you try to retrieve them. Also, sorry for how poor the photo is that I used!

Here is an example photo of what to look out for. You see the cookies in the red/straighter line? They're perfect. You can sort of see that they're either entirely pale, or have obvious edges of a darker, more golden colour. The cookies in the blue/squigglier line are overdone. They still taste just as good, but you kind of break your teeth on them when you bite into them. They're a much darker colour and sort of a musty brown all over, rather than a nice golden colour, especially the left one.

I hope this acts as a good visual aid for people!

I hope this blog was at the very least an interesting read for people, if not helpful. I had a lot of fun writing it, and baking is one of my favourite hobbies, as well as being a useful skill! I hope for more people in the world to discover how much of a relaxing hobby it can be, whilst having something delicious to reward you with both during the process and afterwards!