The best of the best

THE BEST Chocolate chip cookies EVER!

Credit: Credit goes to Dora at allrecipies.com

I found her recipe a while back and there was no doubt, it IS the best.

I did make some changes though; her recipe calls for walnuts, I don't like nuts in my cookies, so I leave them out. Her recipe calls for all-purpose four, which is good, I just typically use unbleached or whole wheat.

What you'll need:

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups unbleached flour (whole wheat is good too)
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons hot water
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth.

Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla.

Dissolve baking soda in hot water.

Add to batter along with salt.

Stir in flour, and chocolate chips.

Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

I cook mine a little less, I'm in the camp that likes cookies slightly raw in the middle, mmm!

I learned that it's helpful to measure out the flour into a separate bowl, then let princess sous chef scoop small amounts from there into the batter. This helped her spill less, so I didn't have to guess and try to figure out what amount actually got into the mixer. It was MUCH easier to focus on helping her count how many scoops she was making.

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Baking tip: NEVER (well try really hard not to) put your butter in the microwave to soften it.

Melted butter will turn cookies flat. Really, really try to leave it out at room temperature for a while to get it soft. If you HAVE to use the microwave use a very low power setting, if I were to do it, I would use the defrost button, for maybe 30 seconds (just watch it very closely).