Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

• 230 g melted butter
• 330 g bread flour
• 5 g salt
• 5 g baking soda
• 100-200 g white sugar
• 100-200 g brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 15 g milk
• 5 g vanilla
• 225 g dark chocolate chips or semi-sweet milk chocolate chips

Method

The structure of these cookies hinges on proper butter-creaming: you're incorporating air into fat to create lift, then relying on baking-soda to amplify that rise in the oven. Start by combining the melted butter with both sugars — white sugar for spread, brown sugar for chew via its molasses content — and beat hard for 3–4 minutes until the mixture pales slightly and thickens. The friction incorporates air and starts to emulsify the butter. Add the egg and milk, then vanilla, and continue beating until the mixture is visibly lighter and fluffy, roughly another 2 minutes. This isn't decoration; you're building the crumb structure.

Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt together separately — this distributes the alkaline soda evenly so you don't get pockets of metallic tang. Fold this dry mixture into the wet ingredients in two additions using a spatula or wooden spoon. Stop folding when you see no flour streaks; overworking develops gluten, which tightens the dough and produces tough cookies. Fold in the chocolate chips last. The dough will be soft but cohesive.

Portion the dough using an ice cream scoop — roughly 15 g per cookie — and space them 5 cm apart on baking parchment. This matters: cookies spread during baking as the butter melts and sugar dissolves; crowding them forces them to weld together. Rest the dough in the fridge for 20 minutes if you have time; cold dough spreads more slowly, giving the baking soda time to produce gas before the edges run.

Bake at 190°C for 10–12 minutes. The telling sign is when the edges colour to golden-brown but the centres still look slightly underbaked and dimpled — the residual heat will set them to tender. Pull them too early and they collapse when moved; too late and they harden. Leave them on the tray for 3 minutes to firm up, then transfer to a cooling rack. They'll crisp as they cool. Store in an airtight container; they'll soften slightly over a day or two as moisture redistributes.