chocolate chip cookies

I love a good cookie. I love to eat them and I love to bake them. 

I have tried a few different chocolate chop recipes but have yet to settle with one that I love. I have a double chocolate chip cookie recipe that I adore, and works every time without fail, but as for a go-to single choc chip recipe? My repertoire lacks one.

At the start of the week I did a little searching online for a good 'un, and found an article on The Guardian online newspaper all about how to cook the perfect choc chip cookie. Now, I am pretty sure that most people would agree that if a photo of food makes the food look good, you are far more likely to want to bake or cook the recipe than if the photo is a little sub-standard. Would you agree? I definitely fall into this camp (which is a big part of the reason why My Baking Addiction is a dangerous place for me to visit, because the photography is fantastic). I wasn't overly consumed with the need to bake The Guardian's recipe, until I scrolled down to the recipe and saw a chocolate jewelled delight staring right back at me. This, along with reading that this recipe recommended letting the cookie dough rest at least overnight, and at most, 72 hours, had me gripped. 

If you think that waiting 72 hours to taste the cookie dough that's sitting pretty in your fridge sounds a little like torture, well, that would probably be quite a normal reaction. My thinking? This was a brilliant opportunity to do a little taste testing at each stage of the dough resting process so that I could effectively compare the differences. So, I baked up 4 cookies as soon as the dough was formed, then 4 more after 24 hours, then 9 (by this point, 4 just didn't seem quite enough) after 48 hours, and I still had dough remaining! 

My verdict is that the flavour and texture definitely improved over 48 hours, resulting in an ever so slightly chewy cookie with just the right amount of crispness and plenty of chocolatey goodness. John's verdict is that my cookies that include condensed milk are better. I agree with this - condensed milk gives a wonderful chewy softness to cookies, and for that, there is no substitute.

{If you'd like to try your hand at baking these, follow the link to the original recipe here:}