I originally nicked this recipe from here, but it’s so good I’ve been claiming it as my own ever since. Now, it’s in American, and I don’t have the brains to translate it into metric, so you’re either going to have to mark it up on a measuring jug (1cup=240ml) or get hold of measuring cups. I bought my metal ones in Homebase, and Made Marian’s Mom gave us a set of Nigella Lawson measuring cups as a housewarming present.

Ingredients
2 sticks butter (OK, I’ll give in on this one, that’s half a pound or 225grams)
2 1/4 cups strong white flour
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar (Seriously, this adds something fantastic to the cookie. Made it once with all white sugar and still haven’t forgiven myself.)
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (For the love of all that’s holy, please use chocolate chips. For some unknown reason, a chopped up bar of chocolate, no matter how high-quality just does not work… It goes horrible. Tastes good, but looks terrible. I usually just use two 100g bags of chocolate chips from Tesco or Dunnes. If you have a wholesale card, Musgrave sometimes have a jar of Saxa chocolate chips which are also pretty good.)

1. Line one or two baking sheets with parchment.
2. Melt the butter in a heavy pan over LOW heat. Otherwise you’ll burn the butter and have to start again. Which is a pain.
3. While the butter is melting, put the salt and sugars into a large bowl.
4. Mix in the melted butter. The original recipe said to use a mixer; I’ve only ever used a wooden spoon and it still only takes about 20 seconds.
5. Beat the egg, yolk, milk and vanilla in a small bowl or pint glass and then mix it with the buttery sugary goodness.
6. Sift in the flour, and mix it up. It’ll still be fairly sloppy at this stage.
7. Whack in the chocolate chips and mix again.
8. Now for the tricksy bit. If you want to bake the cookies straight away, measure them into equally-weighted balls (I usually go for 50g because that’s what my old boss did), stick them on cling-film lined plate and whack them in the fridge for a half-hour or so. Now is also the time when you turn on the oven to pre-heat to 190C. I bet you were wondering why I didn’t do that at the start, weren’t you?
9. Bake for 12-15 minutes. You don’t want them completely soggy as otherwise you’ll just wind up with hockey-pucks. You need them to be a bit wibbly in the middle so you have a nice, soft, chewy cookie. I can generally only fit 8 on a baking tray to allow for spreading. You may also want to smoosh the doughballs a little in order to wind up with a flattish circle, maybe 1-1.5cm deep.
10. If you want to freeze the dough (which I do all the time), weigh out the dough in multiples of 50g, eg 200g, 400g so as to have an exact number of cookies. Wrap it up in cling-film like a tube and stick it in the freezer. Take it out about 24 hours before you want it and stick it in the fridge to defrost.

These are ridiculously good and easy cookies. The quantity that you wind up with is ridiculous; hence the freezing. Of course, if you’re going to a party, feel free to bake the lot and bring them with you.

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