Chocolate chip cookies are one of America’s most beloved sweet treats. Fresh out of the oven, an ooey, gooey chocolate chip cookie is just what people need to put them in a better mood.

Cookies are best baked on a nonstick cookie sheet. The non-stick coating provides better release and makes the pan easier to clean. If you are using an aluminum pan which does not have a nonstick coating you will need to coat your pan with non-stick vegetable spray or line it with parchment paper before baking sugar cookies are easy to remove.

Step 1: Making the cookie dough

Most people like a crispy cookie, however a for a soft, chewy, cookie use brown sugar instead of granulated sugar as the brown sugar can hold more moisture and will keep your cookies soft.

Ingredients

• 2¼ cup all-purpose flour
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 1 cup(or 2 sticks)of unsalted butter,soften
• ½ cup granulated sugar
• ½ cup firmly packed dark brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
• 1½ cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Step 2:

The fun starts once you grab your measuring cups and spoons to begin combining all of the dry ingredients in one bowl. Add in your flour, baking soda, and salt.

Step 3:

In a separate large bowl, beat the softened butter and sugars with an electric mixer until it’s turned into a light and fluffy creamed mixture. During this step you should be able to see a change in color. If your mixture hasn’t lightened, it’s not ready yet – keep beating! If you don’t have a mixer, you could do this by hand it’ll just take a little extra energy.

Step 4:

Once your butter and sugar are fluffy, beat in egg, add vanilla extract and mix it all up well. Don’t forget to scrape down the sides of your bowl as needed.

Step 5:

Next, add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, mixing until combined. Make sure you start your mixer on a low speed so that a cloud a flour does not go making a mess around your kitchen. The key is to be patient.

Step 6:

Now it’s time for the best part – adding in your chocolate chips. You can use semi-sweet chips for a less sweet cookie or a dark chocolate for a more bitter cookie, but you can always experiment with whatever you have. You could even make a custom mix of chip flavors. If you wanna dress up your cookies you could also add sprinkles or walnuts to them.

Step 7:

Next, drop your dough in rounded tablespoons onto an ungreased cookie pan or baking sheet with parchment. I usually use a small cookie scoop for this, just to speed things up. To get them more even and round cookie you could use an ice cream scooper. With this recipe you can get about two dozen cookies. Just enough to share with a couple friends.

Step 8

Pop the cookies in the oven for 11 to 13 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown. Once they’re done, take the pan out and let your cookies cool for 3 minutes on the pan, then move them to a cooling grid to cool completely.

Substitutions

If you don’t have all the required ingredients you can tweak a little and use substitutions. If you find yourself without baking soda, sugar, or eggs, these easy substitutions can help you in a pinch. Although you use substitutions the cookies still may not taste like the original.

Instead of baking soda just use baking powder or leave the baking soda out completely. (your cookies may not rise as much) If you do not have unsalted butter use salted butter but make sure to take away the regular salt. If you don’t have eggs use ¼ cup applesauce or mashed banana. If you don’t have vanilla leave it out or use a vanilla bean, vanilla paste or vanilla sugar. If you don’t have semisweet chocolate chips use whatever chocolate you’d like! If you don’t have chocolate chips, you can chop up a chocolate bar or baking bar, or use chocolate candies or nuts.

Baking is about having fun and being creative do whatever you like and what makes you happy!