I have a confession to make. I just ate a handful of these cookies—and then went back for two more. I really only meant to have one. I’m not sure how my plate is half empty. Dotted with relatively colossal chunks of chocolate, these cookies are soft, chewy, just a wee bit cakey—and wickedly addictive. Among other ingredients, half a pound of butter + a pound of chocolate = pure bliss, in baked form.
The short instructions for these cookies go something like: Make, bake, inhale.
These cookies also stay nice and thick since the dough has a fair amount of flour compared to butter (so they don’t flatten out when baked).
I’m a sucker for a warm cookie.
Use any semi-sweet chocolate you like a lot, chopped into large pieces.
Let’s take a closer look at all that chocolate.
The best way to chop chocolate
The best way that I’ve found to chop up chocolate is with a serrated bread knife.
Don’t saw, just press down on the back of the blade, like you would a regular knife. The teeth will bite into the chocolate a little and keep your knife from slipping. (Try using a regular butcher’s knife to do this and you’ll see what I mean…it’s borderline dangerous.)
Best Ever Chocolate Chunk Cookies
16 Tbls. butter (that’s 2 sticks)
1 cup dark brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
3 cups flour
1 tsp. baking soda
pinch of salt
16 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, chopped
Yields about 4 1/2 dozen cookies (if you make the balls of dough about the size of a ping pong ball).
About a half an hour before you’re going to bake, set the butter out on your counter to soften up.
When you’re ready to bake, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper or silicone baking mats and set them aside.
Chop up the chocolate
Grab your chocolate.
Chop it up into large-ish chunks (about the size of a blueberry or a small-ish cherry). I do this by pressing down on the chocolate with a serrated bread knife. Works like a charm and the knife doesn’t slip like a butcher’s knife would.
Set the chopped chocolate aside while you put the dough together.
Mix the dry ingredients
Put the flour in a medium-sized bowl. Toss in the baking soda and salt.
Mix together well with a whisk. Set the bowl aside for a few minutes.
Make the cookie dough
Put the softened butter in the bowl of your stand mixer (or in a large mixing bowl if you’re using a hand-held mixer).
Toss in the white sugar.
Measure out the brown sugar (be sure to smoosh it down and pack it tightly into the measuring cup).
Toss the brown sugar into the bowl.
Beat them together until they’re well combined.
The butter and sugars will form a thick paste.
And will look kind of like this:
Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Crack in the eggs.
Beat the eggs together with the butter/sugar mixture.
Let the mixer run for a few minutes, so the mixture is a little fluffy, like this:
Add the vanilla. Beat to combine it well.
Combine the dry ingredients with the wet
Add the flour mixture to the butter/sugar/egg mixture.
Beat on medium-high to combine well. Stop when the dough just comes together. (If you beat it too long, your cookies can get tough.)
It’ll look about like this:
Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add the chopped chocolate to the dough
Toss the chopped chocolate into the dough.
Beat the dough for maybe 20 seconds, until the chocolate is just incorporated.
Form and bake the cookies
Grab a blob of cookie dough.
Roll it between your palms until it forms a ball. You want it to be about the size of a ping pong ball.
Set the ball of cookie dough on your prepared pan.
Repeat with more dough until you have about a dozen cookies on the pan, evenly spaced out.
Repeat with another dozen cookie dough balls on your other prepared pan. Pop the pans into your preheated 350-degree oven. Bake for 13 minutes.
How can you tell when the cookies are baked?
Bake at 350 degrees for 13 minutes. As they bake, the cookie dough balls will flatten out into gorgeous little mounds of baked cookie goodness. Take the pans out of the oven when the tops of the cookies are *just* lightly brown. (If you let them get dark, they’ll be crispy, not chewy.)
Let the cookies cool on the pan for 5 minutes to set up a little more.
Then slide them off onto a rack to finish cooling.
At this point, you really *should* start taste testing. You know, just to be sure. It’s the responsible thing to do.
Repeat with the rest of the dough until you’ve used it all up.
(This is the part where I stop counting the cookies that I’ve, um, tested.)
It’s like you have a little cookie army.
Enjoy!
