My Friend's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Of the soft and thick variety and notably delicious. He sent me a very nice description of his method (which I have yet to try!)

Aaron's Chocolate Chip Cookie / Method

"There's nothing special about this recipe's ingredients, like I said last night, it's just the Toll House one from the bag of the chocolatechip bag (don't tell anybody). The trick is all in how you make them. The recipe itself is below, but there are two things you should know before you try it on your own: first, I'm more a cook than a baker, somy measurements are never exact and I always taste at each stage addinga little of whatever I think the dough needs, and second, I think baking is an art best practiced with others so if you want to try your hand at making these cookies let me know and we can experiment together.

That said, simple recipe:
2 1/4 cups of flour
1 tsp. baking soda1 tsp. salt
1 cup butter3/4 sugar
3/4 brown sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
12-oz. of whatever chips you like (chocolate, peanut butter,butterscotch, all three?)

The method is the artsy part...combine the flour, salt, and baking soda and stir it with a fork or a whisk for about a minute to incorporate some air, then let it sit.
combine the sugars, mix them with a fork or an automatic mixer for a few seconds, just to breakup the brown sugar and mix the white sugar in. Then add a stick of butter (real butter, unsalted, Hotel Bar is the brand I use. Also, I pop the stick in the microwave for about 15 seconds and then cut it into pieces which I add one-by-one). Cream the butter and sugar for a minute and add the vanilla (a little extra vanilla never hurt anybody, and it smells sogood). Mix until everything is incorporated together.

Now the tricky parts...break the eggs into a bowl of their own. Start mixing the butter/sugar/vanilla. Add one egg and mix until incorporated. Add the other egg. Then slowly add in the sifted flour mixture, making sure each batch is fully incorporated before adding the next.

After all that, you just mix in your chips, eat about half the dough (optional, but highly recommended), then make little dough balls out of the other half and bake them at 350 for about 10 minutes."