Crunchy Chocolate Chip Cookies
The American classic with proven quantities: golden, crisp edges, a centre that is only just soft, and chocolate chips that are still melting when the coffee arrives.
The balls of dough need plenty of space on the tray — this dough spreads a good deal as it bakes.
The baking time is where you choose which biscuit you want, and either is right: 7 to 8 minutes gives soft cookies with a centre that looks almost raw; 10 to 12 gives the crisp edges the recipe is named for. Either way they come out while the middle still looks soft — they finish cooking on the hot tray.
A colourful variant: instead of chocolate chips, candy-coated chocolate buttons work just as well. They bleed a little colour as they bake and speckle the cookies — the more popular version at children's parties. The soft alternative are the chocolate chip cupcakes.
Ingredients
- 250 g butter, at room temperature
- 250 g sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 egg
- 300 g all-purpose flour (plain flour)
- 150 g chocolate chips (or candy-coated chocolate buttons)
Method
- 1
Beat the butter with the sugar for 5 minutes, until the mixture is pale and airy.
- 2
Add the vanilla and the egg and carry on beating.
- 3
Add the sifted flour and fold it in with a spatula: from here on, no mixer.
- 4
Add the chocolate chips and mix only enough to distribute them.
- 5
Using a teaspoon, drop walnut-sized portions onto a tray lined with baking paper, well apart from each other: this dough spreads a good deal in the oven.
- 6
Bake at 180 °C, the same temperature as a loaf cake. 7 to 8 minutes for soft cookies; 10 to 12 for crisp edges. Either way, take them out while the middle still looks soft.
- 7
Leave them for 2 minutes on the tray before moving them to a rack and cooling them completely. Only once cold do they take on their final texture.