Before I ever watched Julia, Ina or Giada, I watched Nancy…my mom. She cooked dinner for my dad, sisters and I pretty much every night (and breakfast and lunch too, for that matter), a feat I did not fully appreciate until I had a busy (and clamoring!) family of my own.
My mom cooked and baked all kinds of things when I was growing up, but there came a point in the ’80s when she really honed in on chocolate chip cookies. The empire of Mrs. Fields was on the rise — we never left the mall without a half dozen “semisweet, no nuts”. She took it on as a challenge to tinker with her own chocolate chip cookie recipe, which we fully supported as taste testers. To this day, she continues to tweak the ratios of butter to sugar to flour, but as of right now My Mom’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies are pretty perfect, if you ask me.
Without question, my mom’s chocolate chip cookie is our family’s most favorite. For my first post on Sunny Days, Good Food — my newest food blog, through which I hope to open a window into the food I most love to cook, eat and explore — I couldn’t think of a recipe I would rather share.
- 1 pound (4 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1½ cups dark brown sugar
- 1½ cups sugar
- 3 eggs
- 2 tablespoons vanilla
- 6 cups flour
- 1½ teaspoons baking soda
- 1½ teaspoons salt
- 2 (12-ounce) packages semi-sweet chocolate chips (my mom prefers the larger disks)
- Cream butter and sugars together using an electric mixer. Add the eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt in a separate medium bowl, then gradually mix it into the wet ingredients. Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Chill the dough for about 1 hour.
- Heat the oven to 350°F. Position racks in the upper- and lower-third of the oven.
- Shape the dough into large balls (about 1-1/2 inches in diameter) and slightly flatten on parchment paper lined cookie sheets.
- Bake for about 20 minutes, rotating the sheets after 10 minutes, until the surface is delicately firm (your finger should not break the surface).
I always thought this recipe made a lot of cookies, but they always seem to be consumed so quickly! I loved being a taste tester for these!! I really can’t eat other chocolate chip cookies now…
congrats Kathy! Love your new blog and know I would love these cookies, too!