Me love cookies!

Cookies are my favorite thing to bake. They are quick and mostly easy. Usually you can mess up just slightly, or add a few extra ingredients into what you're making and the cookies still turn out pretty great. This wouldn't work well when trying to make a beautiful, fluffy cake.

The cookie made most in my house growing up was the chocolate chip cookie. There are a lot of good chocolate chip cookie recipes out there, but this is the one I use. It's the one my mother uses. It's the one I will teach to my own kids some day. Not to say I don't make variations of it at times. Sometimes I add just a pinch of nutmeg, or almond extract, but more often than not, I follow the recipe as is.

This recipe makes about 2.5 dozen cookies, depending on how big you make yours. Up until about 2 weeks ago, I used to just always make all the cookies at once. Then a dear friend pointed out something so obvious that it immediately made me feel like I had majorly missed the bus in life. Cookie dough freezes. Make the dough, make however many cookies you want that night, and then freeze the rest so fresh baked cookies are always about 10 minutes away. Seriously genious. Unless you have someone to share them with. The go ahead and just make the whole batch. :)

Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes about 2 1/2 dozen

1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup shortening (I use the Crisco sticks. They are wonderful and much cleaner than the tub of shortening)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 ounces (1/2 a bag) of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Directions:
1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Mix sugars, butter, shortening, egg and vanilla. Stir in remaining ingredients.

2. If you like perfectly round cookies and want to roll the dough, chill the dough for about 15 minutes in the fridge first. Otherwise, drop dough about 2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet. Bake 8-10 minutes (until just starting to turn brown). Cool slightly before removing from cookie sheet.