Best Easy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Don't those cookies look delicious? They were! I had the opportunity to do some baking when I was at home two weekends ago, so of course I made chocolate chip cookies! Baking these is my therapy - working with the ingredients and the dough does a lot to relieve any stress I'm feeling and I enjoy giving them away to friends. Plus, there's that added bonus of, you know, getting to eat them!

I use the recipe from the back of the Nestle Tollhouse Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. But I've made this recipe so many times now that I have it memorized. It was first taught to my by my older sister, Rebekah, and it was taught to her by our dad. So it's kind of a family tradition. I always double the recipe, which means I end up with about 6 dozen cookies. Here's the recipe with the doubling math already done for you:

1 1/2 cups white sugar

1 1/2 cups brown sugar (packed)

1 cup butter (softened)

2 tsp vanilla extra

4 eggs

4 1/2 cups flour

2 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

chocolate chips*

In a large mixing bowl, mix together the sugars, butter, and vanilla extract. Add the eggs and beat until thoroughly mixed. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, salt, and soda. Add the flour mixture to the sugar mixture (I find that it's easier to stir if you only add half the flour mixture at a time).

Now it's time for my secret trick. Pick up a bit of the dough. You'll notice that it's really sticky, which will make it hard to roll into perfect little round balls for baking**. At this point, you'll need to add 1/2 cup to 1 1/2 cups of more flour, until you can pick up some dough and have it stick only slightly to your fingers. The trick is to be able to roll the dough without it pulling but you also don't want to add so much flour that the cookies are dry. If you hit the sweet spot of added flour, the dough will be easy to roll and you'll have extra fluffly, chewy cookies.

Now stir in the chocolate chips - as many as you think you need. Preheat oven to 375 degrees farenheit and start forming the balls of dough and placing them on your cookie sheet(s). Bake cookies for 10 minutes or until lightly brown.

I rarely add walnuts to the recipe because some people in my family (here's looking at you, Jonlad) don't like them and a lot of people have nut allergies. But I happen to LOVE having walnuts in my chocolate chip cookies, so I made about 2 dozen worth of these.

Here are most of the cookies, in various stages of cooling. Aren't they beautiful? I told Brother 2.0 to take the cookies on the paper plate over to the neighbors; not sure if they ever made it, though.

*The Nestle bag has a measurement for the chocolate chips but I never use it, I just pour chocolate chips in until I think I've reached the right amount.

**Yes, I always hand-roll my cookie dough. It's the way my family's always done it and I think it makes the cookies more personal. Additionally, it's great for when you're baking with little kids because then they really get it on the action - just make sure their hands are clean!