On Sunday morning I woke up a bit earlier than my partner, as he had a bigger night than I did the night before. So I could have lazed around in bed, watched some TV or read a book. But instead, I felt the urge to bake chocolate chip cookies, because that’s a totally normal thing to do on a Sunday morning.

I really love chocolate chip cookies, is anyone else with me? I don’t know what it is about them, but I’ve always been a number one fan. I feel like they might be the king amongst cookies, the one cookie to rule them all. I mean, I know thee is so much choice when it comes to cookies and biscuits in general, but I find nothing compares to a delicious chocolate chip cookie. It’s like pure happiness in baked good form, and you don’t even need to cook them, the cookie dough is just as amazing!

Now that I have completed my ode to delicious chocolate chip cookies, which I hope you enjoyed, I can continue on with my post. Although I can enjoy all types of chocolate chip cookies, I love gooey ones with melty chocolate inside. I’ve never been a huge fan of hard cookies in general, which is often a point of contention amongst cookie lovers. So I’m always looking for recipes that will yield soft, gooey cookies rather than hard ones. I’ve noticed on Pinterest there are a number of diagrams for the avid cookie lover that show you what ingredients result in each type of cookie, which I found pretty interesting and helpful. I mainly have kudos for whoever spent the time making that many batches of cookies in order to create the diagram. It must have been a really delicious experiment.

So I decided that maybe I needed to embark on a little experiment of my own. I have noticed that there are pretty much a billion recipes for chocolate chip cookies, all of which claim that theirs is the best recipe in the world. I’m not really sure which one should wear the crown of the best cookie recipe in the entire world, as cookie loving is so subjective. But I did decide that I should try out a few of these ‘best cookie recipes’ and see which one reigned supreme, just like Iron Chef but for baked goods. After all, there’s no harm in giving as many cookie recipes a go as possible, except perhaps for the waistlines of those around me. RIP waistlines.

The recipe I tried for this post was one such recipe that claimed it was the best chocolate chip cookie recipe, and I had a look at it and thought it might have potential. And oh boy did it ever. The cookies were absolutely delicious, and were gone within the day. Honestly, once you started eating them you couldn’t stop. They were so gooey and delicious, perfect for a Sunday treat. And the recipe itself was nice and simple, not really involving much preparation or difficulty in the baking. So I believe we have started the competition off strong.

Soft, Gooey Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from	Pinch of Yum
Preparation Time	15 minutes
Cooking Time	9-11 minutes
Servings	16 cookies
Ingredients ·         ½ cup or 8 tablespoons of salted butter ·         ½ cup of caster sugar ·         ¼ cup of packed brown sugar ·         1 teaspoon of vanilla extract ·         1 egg ·         1 and ½ cups of plain flour ·         ½ teaspoon of baking powder ·         ¼ teaspoon of salt ·         1 packet of chocolate of your choice – I used milk cooking chocolate, about 200 grams worth Method 1.      Preheat oven to 180 degrees celcius (350 degrees Fahrenheit). Microwave the butter for 40 seconds so it is just barely melted (make sure you don’t overheat it, so if it isn’t completely melted put it back in for 5 second increments). 2.      Using electric beaters, beat the butter with the white and brown sugar until smooth and creamy. Add the egg and vanilla extract, beating until fully incorporated. Try not to overbeat as it will stiffen the cookies, just keep it to 10-15 seconds. 3.      Add the plain flour, baking powder and salt to the bowl. Mix until the dough becomes crumbly, and use hands to form into a dough. At this stage the dough should not be too wet or too dry. 4.      Break the chocolate block up into small chunks and mix into the dough with your hands. 5.      Cover a baking tray with baking paper, and roll the dough into 16 medium sized balls (if you want larger cookies, just roll less). Ensure you leave a bit of room between each cookie on the sheet to avoid them sticking when baking. 6.      Bake the cookies for 9-11 minutes, or until the cookies puff up and are just barely golden. They should be pale and puffy when they come out of the oven, as this will ensure they are nice and soft on the inside. 7.      Allow the cookies to rest for about half an hour, if you can wait that long. They will firm up on the outside and remain nice and soft on the inside. Keep in an airtight container and they will last as long as you can hold off eating them for.

So to make this a true competition across my blog posts, I am introducing a scoring mechanism for the cookie recipes that I try, just so that we can objectively measure the success. I will score the cookies in a couple of categories out of 10 to ensure supreme cookie awesomeness. This will rate the cookies for their ease of baking, gooeyness, taste and a special score for how quickly they were eaten, which I will so aptly name the ‘gone factor’. Here is the first recipes score:

Supreme Cookie Awesomeness Score

Simplicity: 8

Gooeyness: 7

Tastiness: 9

Gone Factor: 9

Total Score: 33/40

Not a bad score for my first entry to the hunt for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. This cookie was truly delicious, and really easy to make. They were quite fluffy but gooey on the inside, which is what you want in a cookie. For a traditional chocolate chip cookie, this one was a perfect standard recipe, which I think you could keep in your arsenal for any time you have a craving. They were so quick that you could have delicious chocolate chip cookies in about half an hour, and how can you argue with that? The cookie dough was also delicious, so if they don’t quite make it to the oven I wouldn’t blame you!

My boyfriend was really excited to wake up to freshly baked cookies, and when I took these over to a friend’s house the rest were demolished in about 20 minutes. I take this as a sign that these chocolate chip cookies were truly irresistible!

What do you like in a chocolate chip cookie? Would you give these ones a go based on how much I liked them? If anyone has a recipe they think might beat this one, let me know and I will check it out!

Until next time, happy baking!

Ella xx