Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ah, we have finally reached my recipes that I made on vacation in Seabrook!  (Yes I am a bit backed up on recipes here!)  This year we had a lot of extra space when it came to packing, so I decided to bring all necessary kitchen supplies.  I remembered that last year, cooking and baking at the beach was not fun at all due to lack of, well, everything, from measuring cups to whisks.  So I packed everything I might need, ranging from cookie sheets to big spoons to cooling racks.  I even packed my food processor and my mixer - both of which I used.  While the boys may have complained lugging my heavy equipment out to the car when we packed, I am pretty sure that everyone in that house was grateful that I had what I needed to make lots of great food!

I had a rule while I was on vacation: BYOI, or Bring Your Own Ingredients.  Everyone could choose any recipe and I'd make it for them, but they had to do the grocery shopping if it was something I didn't have.  Luckily, Mom and Kenzie got their request in before I did the big grocery shopping trip the first day of vacation, and that is how these chocolate chip cookies came to be.  Both of them had been saying I don't make enough chocolate stuff for them (since I am not a huge fan of chocolate), so it was chocolate chip cookie time.

This is a fairly standard chocolate chip recipe, with one exception: the forming of the cookies.  This may not be confusing to anyone else, but I literally had to read it 100 times before I understood what it was asking me to do when it came to shaping the cookies.  It said to make a ball of dough, hold it in my fingertips, and pull it apart into equal halves.  Okay, so far, so good.  Then rotate halves 90 degrees and, with jagged surfaces facing up, place the dough on the sheet.  That's the part I had to keep reading.  I think it was the 90 degrees throwing me off; it's been so many months since I taught angles! :)  Basically you make a ball of dough, rip it in half, and put the two halves down on the cookie sheet, rip-side-up.  Again, this might be way more information necessary for you to understand what to do, but I was a little lost :)

The final results were fantastic.  The cookies are thick and chewy - which I guess you'd expect, from the title, but this time the title does not deceive.  I made a double batch and they were all gone within 24 hours.  I did end up adding some walnuts to the second batch to appease my mom and aunt, so that is an option you can keep in mind if you're a nut-lover.  Basically if you need a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe, this is it.

Recipe:

thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies
from Annie's Eats

Ingredients:
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
1 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg plus one egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips