How to make cookies: (Chocolate chip cookies, to be exact.)
Ever wondered how to make chocolate chip cookies? Of course you have! Otherwise you wouldn’t be reading this. In just four steps, you’ll be able to make your very own batch of chocolate chip cookies.
Step One: Prep time!
Buy/make sure you have all the necessary ingredients for cookie making, as well as a mixer, a couple cookie sheets, a cup measurer and an oven as well as oven mitts. If you don’t have these things already, it will incredibly difficult to accomplish this task of cookie making and baking. If you don’t have a mixer you will have to stir by hand, and if you do not own a microwave you will need to let your butter sit out and soften before mixing your ingredients. Also, if you don’t know how to work an oven, or baking is difficult for you, you may not want to attempt something as dangerous and complex as cookie making.
As far as ingredients go, you’ll need flour (2 ¾ cups, roughly), sugar and brown sugar (2/3 cup of each), butter (1 cup), 2 eggs, ½ a teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of both vanilla and baking soda. Don’t forget to also buy a bag of chocolate chips. You get to decide how much chocolate you want your chocolate chip cookies to have. I like to pour in a whole bag, but that’s just because I love chocolate.
Set up your mixer and get all the ingredients, cookie sheets, and measuring utensils out. Make sure you actually have room to put them somewhere. That should be simple enough.
If you’ve made cookies before and are quick to mix all the ingredients together and get them on a cookie sheet, you can start preheating the oven to 350F. If you’re slow, even if you’ve done it a million times, like me, then you should wait until all the ingredients are mixed together.
Step Two: Begin mixing with the small stuff
Start mixing together the ingredients.
First, you start with the small stuff. Mix the vanilla, salt, and baking soda first. Remember, only half a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of vanilla, and a teaspoon of baking soda. If you don’t want to be wasteful, then you can use the same teaspoon to measure out all the necessary amounts of the three ingredients.
Next go in butter and eggs.
If your butter isn’t already soft, make sure to microwave it for 10-15 seconds. Be sure not to leave your butter in the microwave forever though! It doesn’t need to be completely melted; just soft.
Now that your butter is nice and soft, stick it in the mixer and mix away. Next come your eggs.
Before you throw in your eggs, shell and all, make sure to follow these two simple guidelines. First, check the egg for any abnormalities. If it’s all cracked and 10 weeks old, it might not be good anymore. Second, if you don’t like eggshell in your cookies, and you’re worried about getting shell fragments into your cookies, then take out a small bowl, break open the egg, and dump the contents into the bowl. That way, you can more easily inspect the egg not only for eggshells, but also for if you missed something when checking the outside of the egg and it turned out to be nasty anyway. I use this method sometimes because it’s much easier to get eggshell fragments out of the yolk when it’s in a separate bowl than if I put the yolk directly into the mix first without checking.
After this, feel free to put the eggs in and let the mixer do its job. Make sure that when you are adding to the mixing bowl that the mixing bowl is off. This should be obvious, but there is probably some idiot out there that will probably stick their hand in the mixer or something.
Step Three: Add the Sugar, Flour, and Chocolate
Now it’s time to use your handy dandy measuring cup. Pour some sugar into it until it fills to the 2/3 cup mark, then dump it into the mixer. Do the same for the brown sugar. After that, make sure all the ingredients are properly mixed together. That means no giant chunks of butter are left in your delicious masterpiece in the making. If there are no chunks, and it all looks like it’s completely blended together, then you can add the flour. Remember, flour is messy, so be extra careful with it, and if you spill it everywhere, don’t use a wet rag to wipe it up.
To add the flour, use your measuring cup to measure out around 2 ¾ cups of flour. Make sure you allow the mixer to stir in the flour until your dough is not longer white between each cup you put in. Depending on how you like your cookies, add more or less flour. More flour=more sturdy cookies, less flour=flat and flimsy cookies.
Now that you have flour in the mix, your contraption can now be called “dough.” In order to make chocolate chip cookies, you’ll need chocolate to add to your dough. If you bought a bag of chocolate chips (like you were told to in step 1) then feel free to add as much as you like, then mix it into the dough. Don’t mix the chocolate too long, because it’s bad for the chocolate.
Step Four: Playing with dough and Baking!
Get a spoon, or use your hands if you like getting messy, and start scooping out the dough and sticking it onto the cookie sheets. At this point, make sure your oven is on if it isn’t already. Depending on how you want your cookies to look, you can simply take round scoops and stick them on. If you’re going for a more messy and amateurish look, then simply pour your cookie dough all over the sheet. It’ll just be one giant cookie in the end. Well, it doesn’t matter as long as it tastes good, right?
Now for the moment you’ve been waiting for…Baking your cookies!
Carefully place your cookie sheet(s) in the oven, but remember to wear oven mitts when doing this, as the oven is very hot. Now set the oven’s timer to 8 minutes, and start preparing another cookie sheet if you still have dough.
After 8 minutes is up, check to see if your cookies are now a nice, brownish color. If they still look like piles of dough, than you should leave them in for a couple more minutes until they’re fully baked. Don’t leave them in too long though, unless you like burnt, rock hard cookies.
Once they’re done baking, put on your oven mitts of safety and pull them out. Be careful when handling hot trays! I once burned my hand rather badly because I didn’t make sure that my hand was fully covered before trying to get a tray out.
After you have your cookies out, make sure to place them on an area that can stand withstand high temperatures. If you have cooling trays, you can place your cookies on those after they’ve sat out for a couple minutes. That way, they won’t stick to the cookie sheet.
Now that your cookies are all baked, make sure to turn the oven off, and enjoy your cookies.
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