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Several years ago, I decided I was going to figure out how to make the best chocolate chip cookie ever.  Three years later, I have done it. Three years of tweaking, replacing this with that, adding more, taking away, and I finally have the most perfect recipe.  So, read on dear friends, and come on this baking adventure with me.  You won’t be sorry.

***Note: The dough needs to sit overnight for these to truly be at their best, so plan to make the dough a day ahead of time.

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Mocha Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

Dry:

3 2/3 cups flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons instant coffee

Wet:

2 1/2 sticks of butter- softened

1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1 TB molasses

2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

1 1/2 pounds chocolate chips

Sea Salt

Process:

Sift dry ingredients into a medium bowl

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars together

Add eggs, vanilla, and molasses to butter/sugar mixture

Slowly add dry ingredients to wet, mix well

Mix in chocolate chips

Cover dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 24-36 hours

Preheat oven to 350

Grease 2 baking sheets

Scoop golf ball sized dough onto baking sheet, placing 2 inches apart

Smoosh them down a tiny bit so you have a flat surface

Sprinkle each cookie lightly with sea salt

Bake 18-20 minutes until edges are just browned, center will still appear uncooked

For those of you who like pictures better than words (like me), join me on the visual journey of cookie making!

First off, get those dry ingredients out and whisk them all together in a big, retro Pyrex bowl.  If you don’t have retro Pyrex you need to go out and get some right now, because it’s crucial to the success of these cookies.  Not really, but it IS amazing.  My husband gives me  an exasperated look every time I walk in the door with more of it.

I just received my first whisk ever from my mom for a wedding shower gift.  How have I gone my whole adult life baking without a whisk? That’s crazy talk!

Don’t forget to add the instant coffee to the dry mix, and please, please don’t make the mistake of using regular old ground coffee for this, it will ruin the whole batch and you’ll be very sorry.  It must be instant.  I keep a container of it in our cupboard just for baking, I put it in almost everything.  If you hate coffee (I don’t know if that’s possible) you can omit it, but it adds incredible flavor and I promise your cookies aren’t going to taste like a cup of coffee.

Did you forget to let the butter soften before starting? I did too.  Instead of stalling this whole event and leaving your kitchen in baking ruins for 3 hours while you wait for those sticks to get to the perfect temp, here’s a short cut.

Now, if you’ve been following my retro kitchen adventures, you can use the brown sugar we made last week for this recipe, if not, use your regular old sugars.  Add in your sugars with the butter and cream those babies together!  I usually run the mixer on medium/high for about five minutes here to really meld the two together.

When you have a nice, creamy and light texture going, go ahead and add in your eggs.  We’re lucky enough to have freshly laid eggs from this morning right in our backyard, just look at those yolks!

Next, add in your vanilla and molasses.  I made my own vanilla a few months ago when I ran out, and it’s so good I don’t think I could ever go back to store bought!

Stir it all together and take a nice big whiff of the delectable amazingness you’ve created so far!

Next, slowly add in your dry ingredients to the wet, while the mixer is on slow, or you are stirring by hand.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl and keep mixing until you can’t see any more flour.

Now for the fun part! Throw in those chocolate chips!  If you want to add more or less than the amount stated in the recipe, you go for it.  Honestly, I always eyeball the amount for the chocolate chips, I just keep adding and stirring until it looks like the amount I want.  My cookies are chock full of chocolate, because it’s amazing.  If you’d like less, or EVEN MORE, that’s up to you!

Now, this is the dangerous part.  Your dough is finished and you need to protect it with your life.

You need to cover your masterpiece tightly with plastic wrap and hide it deep within the confines of your refrigerator to keep it safe from the clutches of husbands and children, and probably even yourself.

I don’t have to tell you that this is the best cookie dough you’ve ever tasted, because I know you’ve already tried it.

Next you’ll need to thoroughly distract yourself for the next 24 hours. Go to the park, read a whole book, bake other, not as good, cookies that you’re allowed to eat an hour after starting them so you can satisfy that sweet tooth.

I know it’s hard to wait a whole day to bake these, but trust me, it’s part of what makes these the BEST CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES EVER!! Those flavors need time to meld and mingle together.  They were strangers when they met, and tomorrow they’ll be the best of friends, stuck to each other like glue.

Is it tomorrow yet?

Okay.  Take that dough out of the fridge and try to refrain from eating it all.  Go preheat that oven to 350 and grease down some baking sheets.  I always use butter to grease my sheets, I simply take a cold stick from the fridge and coat the whole surface.  Using non stick sprays is not suggested for this recipe, it affects the flavor.  Butter on the bottom of the cookies makes them toasty brown and tasty good.

Your dough balls need to be the size of golf balls.  I know this seems crazy to you seasoned bakers, and yes it is big, but it makes the perfect sized cookies, with crispy edges and soft middles.  Roll up those balls and place them two inches apart on your cookie sheets.  Smoosh them down a tiny bit so you have a flat surface.  I’m not talkin’ about making cookie pancakes here, just smoosh them a tad.

Sprinkle the top of each cookie lightly with sea salt. Don’t go skipping this step because your doctor told you to eat less salt, it’s the secret ingredient that makes these the best. I won’t tell your doctor if you don’t.  I purposely adjusted the amount of salt in the dough so that this added salt on top makes for the perfect amount overall.

Years in the making here, folks!

Now, pop them in the oven.  I only bake one sheet at a time on the middle rack.  If you try to do two sheets at a time with rotations and opening and closing the oven all the time, your cookies will come out unevenly baked and weird.  One at a time is the way to go.

Set your timer for 18 minutes and again, find a way to distract yourself until they’re done.  Check on them when the 18 minutes is up, they should be golden brown on the edges and be very soft looking in the middles.  If they aren’t golden brown on the edges, leave them in until they are.  You’re judging the done-ness by the edges, not by the whole top of the cookie.  Because these cookies are so big, if you wait until the middle is golden brown, your edges will be burnt.

Take them out and let them sit on the cookie sheet for a few minutes.  When they’re stiff enough, slide them off and onto a wire rack to cool.  Or slide them off and into your mouth because you worked really hard and you totally deserve a warm cookie.

Serve your cookies to your family and friends on your glorious monster platter.  Wait, you don’t have one of those?  Get one here!

Enjoy those cookies for the one day they will last in your house.

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