Giant Chocolate Chip Cookies
Bakery-size chocolate chip cookies with golden edges and a soft, doughy center. I've been making these since high school, when I sold them to classmates (not exactly school approved, but nobody ever told me to stop).
Ingredients
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup white sugar
¾ cup brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract (imitation is fine)
2¼ to 2½ cups all-purpose flour (use 2½ at higher elevation)
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1½ to 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
¼ cup walnut halves or pieces (optional)
Equipment
#12 disher (⅓ cup scoop), for even, bakery-size cookies
Bare aluminum sheet pan, light colored
Steps
Cream the butter and both sugars until light and fluffy. If your butter is cold, microwave it in 10 second bursts until softened, about 30 to 40 seconds total.
Add the eggs one at a time, mixing each in fully before adding the next. Mix in the vanilla.
Preheat the oven to 325°F. In a separate bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt for a minute or two to break up clumps and lighten the flour. A sifter works too.
Add half the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until mostly combined. Add the rest and mix just until no dry flour remains. Don't overmix, especially with a stand mixer.
Fold in the chocolate chips. If using walnuts, crush them by hand or with the bottom of a bowl instead of chopping them, which releases some of their oil for more flavor, then fold them in.
Scoop with a #12 disher and place 6 cookies per sheet pan, evenly spaced.
Bake about 14 minutes, until the bottom edges are light brown and the tops are beige. Add or subtract a minute for your preferred doneness.
Let the cookies rest on the hot pan for at least 5 minutes before moving them. They keep cooking here, so pull them a little early if you like them soft.
Michael's notes
Compared to the classic back-of-the-bag recipe, I use a lot more vanilla, add baking powder alongside the soda, and bump the flour for our elevation. Stick with semi-sweet chips: they balance the sugar, and their deeper cocoa flavor plays off all that vanilla. Dark or nonstick pans brown the bottoms faster, so watch your first batch.
About the dough: food safety folks will tell you not to eat raw cookie dough, since raw eggs and raw flour can both carry bacteria. Consider yourself told. I've also eaten it out of the bowl every time I've made these since high school. Make your own call.
The Backstory
In high school, I sold these cookies at school for $1.25 each. This was before Venmo, so I always had a pocket full of quarters for change. My parents were super supportive, so every day I baked two dozen and brought them with me.
The first day, I had no idea how to actually sell them. Standing up in the middle of class to ask who wanted a cookie didn't feel right, and I was pretty shy. So I just carried the bag around all day. Somewhere around the last period, a kid named Dennis, who I had a couple classes with, asked what was in the bag. I told him I had cookies and was selling them. Lunch was a few hours behind us, so he bought one.
He took a bite, turned to pretty much the whole class, and announced it was the best cookie he'd ever had in his life. After that, I never had to try. People I'd never met would come up and ask, "Are you the guy who sells cookies?" I almost always sold out.
Technically, I wasn't supposed to be doing it. I'm convinced every teacher knew. Most of them bought cookies at some point or at least told me they supported it. The one I was never sure about was my water polo coach, who was the strictest about rules. Either he never noticed or he worked very hard not to.
My favorite moment came from my math teacher. I wasn't a great student, especially near the end, when I knew I was testing out of high school. But one day the word problem on the board was about a student selling two kinds of cookies, with walnuts and without, where the walnut ones cost more to make. The goal was to solve for how many of each to bake to maximize profit. The whole class was in on the joke. I paid attention that day, and I can still solve a system of equations because of it.
I don't sell them in the hallway anymore, but this is still the recipe.