Easy Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

One of my various missions for 2020 is to become more of a baker (it all comes down to earning the right to buy cute baking supplies like reindeer-shaped cookie cutters, ha).

Right now, that means I’ll try to bake something more or less once a month – and then I’ll share the recipe IF it turns out ok, because if it’s Shahnaz proof, then I have zero doubts that you can also pull it off.

In January, I tried my hand at a Kiwi passionfruit pavlova for F’s birthday. No recipe shared because the pavlova was trickier than intended (oops). It came out edible, but that’s not where I want to set the bar.

My second attempt worked, bringing you the banana walnut cake recipe.

Today, I’m sharing a recipe for easy to make chewy chocolate chip cookies inspired by Café Delites.

Bonus: It’s February 29th, which is a very special occasion – not just because it is a leap year, but because it is the day my paternal grandmother turns 100 years old! #lifegoals

Ingredients

125g of butter, half melted half soft

90g (3/4 cup) Brown sugar

30g (1/4 cup) White sugar

2 teaspoons Vanilla extract

2 tablespoons Sugary syrup, i.e. honey (or maple syrup or agave or golden syrup)

1 egg

1/4 teaspoon baking soda (or 3/4 teaspoon baking powder)

1/3 teaspoon salt

100g Chocolate chips, divided

Instructions

If like me, you don’t have store-bought chocolate chips, but do always have a stash of chocolate lying around, start by preparing 100g of dark chocolate to break up into homemade chocolate chips by hand. I recommend a mix of pure dark chocolate (80%) and dark chocolate with salted caramel – for an extra kick or twist that will make your taste buds sing.

Pre-heat the oven to 175C.

Melt the butter until it is half soft, half melted (either microwave it, put it on the wood burner, or whatever else works), then add the brown and white sugar to the bowl and beat until creamy and/or all the sugar has dissolved.

Add the honey, vanilla extract, and egg; lightly beat until mixed.

Add flour, baking soda (or baking powder, in my case), and the salt; mix until combined.

Add most of the chocolate chips to the mix – you’re keeping a handful to add on top of the cookie dough balls once they are laid out on the oven tray – and fold in by hand or with a spatula.

Scoop onto baking paper on the oven tray; add the rest of the chocolate chips.

Bake 10-11 minutes (my cue was that the edges were golden, telling me the rest of the mass was probably cooked even if it still seemed very very soft).

Take out of the oven and let cool for 30min before giving it a taste.

Lessons learnt

My cookies turned out DELICIOUS, but…

1. Get your spacing right! I put the dollops of cookie dough too close to each other, so as they baked, they expanded into pretty much a single giant cookie (not sure that’s not a win, but thought I’d flag it anyway).
2. The ideal to let the cookies cool down is to place them on a rack so there is some air circulation underneath them (I just used the grilling rack of the oven set on the counter).
3. Recommendation: be smart, and put all your cookies in a Tupperware, leaving just a few out – otherwise you might give yourself a slight stomach ache by devouring more cookies than you care to admit within the hour. Learn from my mistakes!
4. For future baking sessions, I may try and coincide with visits to friends so that the baked goods aren’t singing their siren song at just me (Francois and Barry both seem to have a will of steel!). After all, sharing is caring, right?
5. A few months ago, two volunteers were here for a week and made a combo brownie-cookie. It was too much, and yet sheer genius. I won’t be reproducing that anytime soon, but if you do, you make a brownie layer and add to it a layer of cookie dough before cooking it all together in a single cake mould.

Happy baking!