If you’re a lover of chocolate chip cookies, like I am, then you probably have your favorite recipe and you may even remember when and where you tasted the perfect chocolate chip cookie. For me, my favorite recipe is Cook’s Illustrated’s perfect chocolate chip cookies and I do indeed remember where I tasted my all-time favorite chocolate chip cookie, although I don’t exactly remember when.
I was young, and staying with a babysitter throughout my school’s summer vacation. I must have been around 7 or 8 years old. One day we had went to my babysitter’s mom’s house, just down the road. My babysitter’s mom was very elderly, but still perfectly capable of living on her own. I don’t know if she was a busy cook or baker, or if she just had a couple good recipes that she threw together, but her chocolate chip cookies were the best I’ve ever tasted. I think that I was allowed to have two, yet I begged for more. They were warm from the oven, chock full of chocolate chips, the browning was perfect and they were the most perfect level of soft, chewy and gooey. I’ve never tasted a chocolate chip cookie like that again, which is unfortunate, because you just hate to lose a good thing. Both my babysitter and her mom have passed away and that recipe for her chocolate chip cookies has vanished. But that’s what makes it so special now.
I’ve made so many chocolate chip cookie recipes and I always end up subconsciously comparing my batch of cookies to my babysitter’s mom’s cookies; none have been quite as good as hers, or at least not as good as I remember them being.
The browned butter of the Cook’s Illustrated perfect chocolate chip cookies, and their chewiness, make this my favorite recipe. I have recently found my second favorite recipe, however, and it comes from a very unexpected place; the inside of a box of unsalted butter. Land O’ Lakes butter, to be exact.
I had cut this recipe for chewy jumbo chocolate chip cookies out of the Land O’ Lakes unsalted butter box a long time ago because the recipe looked okay and I tucked it away into my recipe book; I was just reluctant to try it out because I didn’t have much hope for a recipe that came from inside a box of butter.
However, I came across a post from Cooking On The Side for this exact same recipe from Land O’ Lakes and the pictures of these cookies looked very tempting. Kathy, like me, was originally skeptical of this particular recipe, but gave it a go and was pleasantly surprised with the outcome. So I decided to pull out my cut-out recipe and finally try it for myself.
The two photos in this post so far show the result of this recipe. While they don’t bring me back to the cookie I tasted nearly 25 years ago, they have earned the status of my second favorite chocolate chip cookie, and with me being so picky about my chocolate chip cookies, that’s saying a lot! The cookies turned out crisp around the edges and chewy in the middle.
But wait, I have a related cookie (at least in that it also has chocolate chips) to share with you in this post; the monster cookie. This is a cookie I’ve never heard of and first found at Sophistimom. I did some searches for monster cookie recipes online, but out of all that I found, Sophistimom’s recipe was my favorite.
These cookies are fully packed with oats and peanut butter and they are jumbo! You could eat these cookies for dinner and be stuffed full! But wow, they are great. Next time I make these (and there will be a next time), I might add a bit more chocolate chips, not much, but maybe a couple tablespoons more. The dough was a little crumbly and the chocolate chips had a tendency to stick together in clumps for some reason. These are super chewy cookies and they stayed gooey in the middle after baking. I made half of these cookies jumbo-sized (for super quick breakfasts!), and the other half I made regular sized with a generously rounded tablespoon of dough (for deserts!). I froze the leftover cookies and they have frozen well.
Find the recipe for Sophistimom’s monster cookies on her website.
- 4¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 teaspoons salt*
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1½ cups unsalted butter
- 1¼ cups sugar
- 1¼ cups firmly packed brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla
- 1 (12-ounce) package (2 cups) semi-sweet chocolate chunks or chocolate chips
- Heat oven to 375°F.
- Combine flour, baking powder and baking soda in a medium bowl. Set aside.
- Combine butter, sugar and brown sugar in a large bowl. Beat at medium speed, scraping the bowl often, until creamy. Add eggs and vanilla. Continue beating, scraping bowl often, until well mixed. Reduce speed to low. Beat, gradually adding flour mixture, until well mixed. Stir in chocolate chunks.
- Drop dough by ¼ cupfuls, 2 inches apart, onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 10 to 14 minutes or until light golden brown. (Do not overbake.) Let stand 1 to 2 minutes. Remove from cookie sheets.
If you enjoyed this recipe, please leave a comment, hit up one of those stars to rate it, and be sure to tag any photos with #sweetestkitchen on Instagram if you made this recipe! I'd love to see what you've created!
So glad you gave them a try! It’s such a good recipe – it looks like yours came out beautifully.
Thanks Kathy, they are really good – I’m so glad I finally decided to get around to this recipe!
I am a chocolate chip cookie snob, and I searched the internet [a few yrs ago] for a recipe and found this same one except It substituted cake flour, 3 1/4 reg flour and 1 cup cake flour, it makes the cookies more tender even if they get cooked a little too long, they will still be tender delicious
I love a good cookie, these look great!
Hiiii! your blog has been in my favorites since a long long time ago and everytime I check it I find myself wanting to eat my laptop hehehe
I want so badly to make this recipe that I’m gonna go for it this thursday! so I have a doubt.. I can’t find any unsalted butter where I live.. The salted one is all I have :/ so what can I do? Just ommit the salt? I hope you can help me!
well.. a lot of venezuelan kisses! 😀
I’m so glad you’re enjoying my blog! I’m surprised you can’t find unsalted where you live. I would definitely omit the salt and use the salted butter. Be sure it’s real butter, as well. Please let me know how it goes; I hope it turns out well for you!
OMG OMG OMG! I just baked the cookies! They’re the BEST cookiee I’ve ever made! They’re crispy on the outsides and chewy in the inside and the taste is sooooo GOOD, the balance between the dough/chocolate is WOW. I divided the dough in half, and put some walnuts and I almost can’t believe how AMAZINGLY PERFECT this cookies are! I totally thank you forever for posting this recipe. I think I love you :** and all my family does too!
That is so awesome! Thanks for letting me know! 🙂
I just made these. I used 1 cup each semi-sweet chips, white chips, and caramel bits. And I did use the 2 tsp of salt. Also I use a large stand mixer and when I add the chips I switch over to the dough hook. So much easier than mixing in by hand. These cookies are amazing.
Wow, mine were your favorite?? Aw, thanks! 😉