Incredibly tasty Chocolate Chip Cookies

These Chocolate chip cookies come from Cook’s Illustrated, who call them perfect. I have to concur. These are delicious, slightly chewy, and flat-out yummy.

I didn’t have chocolate chips on hand, so I went with M&Ms. The result was a bit multicolored but that only added to the fun.

I had to take two aside for my parents; otherwise my sisters and I would have gobbled all of them down.

Ingredients
240 g
 all-purpose flour
1/2 
tsp baking soda
220 g butter
120 g granulated sugar
180 g dark brown sugar
2
 tsp vanilla extract
1
 large egg
1
 large egg yolk
300 g semisweet chocolate chips or chunks, or M&Ms.

How-to.
1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees c. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Add flour and baking soda to a bowl. Set aside.
3. In a skillet on medium heat, take 150 g. butter and melt it. Keep it on the heat, stirring randomly until the liquid is a dark golden brown, but not burnt. (I ended up turning up the heat slightly for the latter, to get a quicker result.)
4. Once you’ve achieved the desired color on the butter, pour it into a heat-proof bowl. Add the remaining, unmelted butter, and stir together until said butter has melted into the liquid.
5. Add the dark and light sugar and the vanilla extract to the bowl. Whisk until it has come together to a thick liquid. (It will probably still be a bit grainy from the sugars, but that is okay.)
6. Add the egg and the yolk to the mixture and whisk together until smooth. Let it stand for a couple of minutes, and then whisk again. The mix should be thick and shiny.
7. Stir in the flour and baking soda.
8. Add the chocolate chips/M&Ms/whatever you fancy. Stir well to ensure that the flour is mixed well in.
9. This should make about 16 cookies, so divide the dough into that. (2-3 tbsp of dough per cookie. If your tablespoons are large, you might want to go with 2 and not 3, unless you want extreme sized cookies.) There should be 8 piles of dough on each sheet. The cookies will spread, so arrange it on the sheets so they have enough space to do so.
10. Bake one tray at the time, in the middle of the oven, until the cookies are golden brown and the edges have started to set, but the centre should still be soft. Approx. 10 minutes, depending on your oven.
11. Use a wide spatula, (unless you want the cookies to break) transfer the cookies to a wire rack. They should be cool before serving, so you get a hard exterior but a soft centre.

Note: I ended up using regular butter, not unsalted, so I removed the salt from the recipe as well.
Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated