Cooking with Betty Crackpot: Chocolate Chip Cookies

It was only a matter of time before I made this recipe as part of this series.  I've been making this very cookie recipe since I was a kid and to this day I still think it's the best.  This was the first recipe I ever experimented with, replacing one of the fats with peanut butter to get a wonderful peanut butter chocolate chip cookie, and the summer I turned 16 I made a huge batch of these to take to a camp I was working at for the summer to share with the staff for break time.  That was when my mom declared "you have these down to a science!"  I had the exact timing down pat - 17 minutes (we were at high altitude) to the perfect cookie.

A couple of notes, though.  First, I never bake anything with chocolate over 350F, and this recipe says to bake at 375F.  Also, the original recipe says this makes about 7 dozen cookies and I have never, ever gotten that many out of it!  When I made these the other night, I got about 3 dozen.  To get 7 dozen out of this you'd have to make very tiny cookies.  And this time I did use shortening, even though I don't believe in baking with it, but I had some on hand and it was already softened so I thought, what the hell.

Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Cooking with Betty Crocker, page 136

2/3 cup shortening
2/3 cup butter or margarine
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
3 cups flour
1 tsp soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup chopped nuts
2 packages (6 oz each) chocolate chips (I used about 1 1/2 cups)

Heat oven.  Mix thoroughly fats, sugars, eggs and vanilla.  Stir in remaining ingredients.  (The original recipe says here "for a softer, rounder cookie, add 1/2 cup flour" - I have never needed to do this.)

Drop dough by rounded teaspoonfuls 2" apart onto baking sheet.  Bake 8 - 10 minutes or until light brown.  Cool slightly before removing from baking sheet.

YUM!  So, so good, and again, very nostalgic for me.  These did not last long in this house, I can tell you that!