Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookies. I love them. My first ever job was as a Saturday girl in a bakery, and I loved the flavour of their chocolate orange cookies. They were enormous. I couldn't quite get over the fact that it was possible to bake something so enormous and evenly textured that tasted delicious. Each Saturday, we would have to clean out the giant drawers that housed the cookies and biscuits which had a shelf life of longer than a day. Inevitably, there would be a good number of broken cookie pieces, which I merrily munched on throughout the day. What a treat. Even though I loved them, there was something about their texture that I pondered on. They seemed to lack a chewiness that would make them perfect.

It was quite possibly from then on that I resolved to find the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. I was excited and determined by the challenge, and I remember scouring my Mother's recipe books in the hope that I would find what I was looking for among the dog eared pages of those books. My first attempt at baking cookies was totally disappointing - they fluffed up beautifully but crisped around the edges too much. Their texture was inconsistent and their flavour was a far cry from the cookies at my bakery. And so the search continued, although I got rather way-laid for a number of years, as I tried my hand at baking no end of brownies and cupcakes. Then came the day that I discovered the wonders of using Condensed Milk in double chocolate chip cookies and boy, did those cookies make me happy. But still, I wanted to find a single chocolate chip cookie recipe that I loved just as much. I have tried a few, which have been fine, but not the mouth watering deliciousness I was looking for.

A few weeks ago, while we were in the throes of packing up our home in preparation to move, I co-hosted a baby shower, and cookies felt like the order of the day. So I started my search for the recipe afresh. And I finally found what I was looking for. This recipe produces perfectly cracked, perfectly chewy cookies and I love them. And if you are in the mood for an enormous cookie, these work perfectly on a giant scale (or if you prefer tiny cookies, they work perfectly for that, too).

(Confession: It might just be 4.20am on a Tuesday morning as I write this, and I might just have consumed the last of a batch of these cookies as a consolation treat for being wide awake at this time in the morning. If you find yourself experiencing insomnia or wakefulness at such an hour and feel in need of a cookie, just let me know, and I will send some your way.)

Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies

ingredients
200g dark brown sugar
100g caster sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp vanilla extract
250g self raising flour
half tsp bi-carbonate of soda
170g unsalted butter, melted
250g chocolate chips (I used half white, half milk chocolate)

1) Pre-heat oven to 170C & grease 3 large baking trays
2) Gently melt the butter
3) Weigh the sugars into a large mixing bowl and add the melted butter. Beat until well combined
4) Beat in the vanilla extract, egg, and egg yolk until mixed
5) Sieve in the flour and bi-carb and mix gently
6) Stir in the chocolate chips
7) Place balls of cookie dough the size of a walnuts (weighing approx 25g) on the prepared baking tray, well spaced apart - these cookies spread a lot. If you would like giant cookies, use an ice cream scoop to measure out the cookie dough
8) Bake for 6-8 mins in pre-heated oven if you have made the dough the size of walnuts. If you have gone for the larger cookie approach, bake for 10 - 12 mins.
9) Whip them out of the oven and leave to cool on their trays for a few mins before transferring to a cooling rack, or consume as soon as they have hardened slightly with a tall glass of milk.