Dear world: something amazing happened this week.

It is not something that I had planned on, or ever expected to happen to little old me.

I made perfect chocolate chip cookies.

Like really, really awesome.  Now, I have spent twenty-two years perfecting the art of botching chocolate chip cookies, so this was a bit of a departure from the usual for me.

Baking cookies was one of my favorite things to do growing up – I even had the classic Tollhouse recipe memorized.  The cookies always tasted good, of course, but they never had that ideal crunchy-to-chewy ratio going on that I was looking for.

Sarah and I were grilling out one night this week, so I thought a batch of good old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies would fit the casual theme for dessert.  Unfortunately the back-of-the-chocolate-chip-bag recipe had failed me one too many times, so I figured I’d branch out.

I Googled around and found this recipe, complete with very enticing pictures.  But let’s be real, my hopes were not that high and I suspected that the internet might be messing with me and the pictures were fake.  Oh well, I went for it anyway.

When I finished making the dough, it seemed too wet… or so I thought.  The motto of the day was “oh well.”

The blog I found the recipe on seemed pretty intense about cookie-makin’, so I left out some of the more “gourmet” steps like flash-freezing the dough before baking or sifting the teaspoons of salt and baking soda in with all the flour (I never do that.  It just seems like a ridiculous step to me.  My time is precious, yo!)

Once the cookies started baking, they looked pretty cakey:

By the time they came out, they would’ve had Alton Brown drooling:

I haven’t the faintest idea what made these cookies so awesome.  Perhaps I mixed up my flour with fairy dust, or (SPOILER ALERT!) Albus Dumbledore came back from the dead and waved the Elder Wand over my cookies while my back was turned.  In actuality, I think it might’ve been the whole “one egg and one egg yolk” instead of two whole eggs deal… but let’s go with Dumbledore, eh?

So without further ado, here are the goods, straight from the recipe box of heaven.  This is my slightly-varied version of the original I found, exactly as I made my cookies – I left out the extra steps and random stuff I didn’t do, because clearly they were not necessary for awesomeness.

The Ultimate Awesome Chocolate Chip Cookies

(adapted from smittenkitchen.com)

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cup butter, melted
• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon vanilla
• 1 egg
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 cups chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325F.  Grease cookie sheets.
2. Cream together the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until blended.
3. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until creamy.
4. Mix in the baking soda, salt, and flour until just blended.
5. Stir in the chocolate chips.  Place cookie dough in rounded balls a few inches apart on cookie sheets.
6. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until edges are lightly toasted.  Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks.

Most important thing: do not overbake them!!  I took them out of the oven when the edges were just barely starting to get golden brown.  They almost looked underdone when I took them out, but after cooling for a few minutes they were – you guessed it – awesome.

SOURCE

It is a small sort of accomplishment, making perfect chocolate chip cookies… but I think it’s a good life skill to have.

Try ‘em?  Tell me!  Happy cookie baking, friends.