Cookies by Alice… oh MY!

Dear God, wherever she is at this moment, please bless Alice. Please keep her safe and well so that she can continue to grace the rest of us with life-altering cookie recipes. Oh my!

Now, I’ve always loved cookies. To me, paired with an ice cold glass of milk, cookies are the ultimate comfort food. A good cookie can effortlessly bring me back to a time when I’d arrive home from a bad (or even good) day at school to a freshly baked batch of my mom’s cookies. They were only ever one of three kinds, but it didn’t matter to me a bit. Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter or Chocolate Peanut Butter Chip… they all worked like a charm. However, as much as I loved my mom’s cookies growing up, I’ve never been able to squash my prepubescent need to create my own unique identity. I love and respect my mom more than any woman in this world, but from dressing differently to listening to different music to the way we go about cooking and baking, I’ve always felt this need to be somehow different from her.

So, it should come as no surprise that I am on a continual quest to find the ultimate cookie recipes. There came a point late last year where I thought I had created my own perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe. They tasted wonderful and were perfectly chewy in the middle… or so I thought. But then… I found this… Alice’s signature chocolate chip cookies…. *swoon*. I was a bit loathe to try them, because, well, then I’d have to admit that I hadn’t come up with the best chocolate chip cookies. In the end though, I had to try them out, if only to prove that mine were still better. Unfortunately (or fortunately, according to my taste buds), I failed at proving that miserably. Not that it matters… with everything that’s been going on this week, these cookies have been my life savers. Thank you Alice!

I’ve included my slightly adapted version below with some of my own notes highlighted. My cookies looked nothing like Alice’s, but they tasted divine regardless. You can also check out my version of Alice’s Classic Oatmeal Raisin Cookies here. Enjoy lovelies!

THE Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe (adapted from Alice’s Chocolate Chip Cookies)
Makes approx. 45-48 cookies using a sm-med 2tbl. cookie scoop

INGREDIENTS:

1 cup (2 sticks)  salted butter, softened

1/2 cup white sugar

1 1/2 cup brown sugar *I used Rogers Best Brown Sugar

2 eggs

2 tsp. vanilla extract

3 cups (12 oz) all-purpose flour *If at all possible, please weigh the flour

1 tsp. smallish-medium coarse sea salt *please do not use table salt, the sea salt gives the cookies a nice flavor and hints of texture. I can’t stress how important this part is; “nice flavor” doesn’t even begin to describe the delicious kick those little salt bits give these cookies!

1 tsp. baking soda

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

2 cups/16 oz of semi-sweet chocolate chips *I just used Western Family (a small name brand here in Canada)

DIRECTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter, sugar, and brown sugar until it is nice and fluffy (approx. 3-5 minutes on medium speed on a K-5). Add both eggs and vanilla and beat for an additional 2 minutes.  Add baking soda, baking powder, salt, and flour until cookie batter is fully incorporated.  Finally add chocolate chips until well distributed.  The cookie batter should be somewhat thick.  Drop about 2 tablespoons of dough or use a medium cookie scoop and plop the batter onto a non-stick baking sheet, or one lined with parchment paper.  Bake for 12-14 minutes until the edges are nice and golden brown. The cookies should look ever so slightly undercooked in the middle. Remove from heat and allow the cookies to stay on the cookie sheet for an additional 2 minutes.  Remove the cookies from the pan with a slotted spatula or by picking up the parchment paper with the cookies still on top and transferring to a cool, non-porous surface.  Allow the cookies to cool for at least 3 minutes before serving. Enjoy!

*Troubleshooting*

-If you’re cookies are coming out flat and not like the pictures there are probably 3 reasons for this.

#1) Baking powder and Baking soda is old.  If your baking powder and soda is older than 1 year and has not been in a sealed (preferably air tight) container, it has lost some of it rising qualities.

#2)  Creaming.  It is not enough to just cream the butter and sugars until it has come together.  This recipe requires you to beat it with a mixer for at least 5 minutes until the texture of the butter and sugar turns to light and fluffy-just like the picture.  I beat mine in my mixer and they were pretty fluffy after about 3 minutes, so this may depend on the speed that you use with your mixer.

#3) Flour.  Flour should be weighed.  This can make or break the recipe because just scooping flour into a measuring cup will never yield ideal or consistent results. I didn’t weigh my flour, but I did pack it down into the cup measure really well and didn’t seem to have any problems.