Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies

BAKERY STYLE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

yield: 12-18 COOKIES

Crazy for crust

These Bakery Style Chocolate Chip Cookies are gooey, chocolatey, XL, and filled with brown butter!

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 sticks butter (we’re going to brown it!)
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon almond extract, optional
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

DIRECTIONS:

1. Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Cook, stirring often, about 6 minutes, until it becomes brown in color. It will foam, reduce, then foam again. Once it’s done cooking the foam is a light brown and it will dissipate after you remove it from the heat. Once it starts to brown, keep stirring so it doesn’t burn. Let sit for about 5 minutes to cool. (Here is a visual on how to brown butter.)
2. Pour into an electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment. While still hot, add both sugars and mix on low until combined. Let sit to cool for a few minutes.
3. While butter mixture is cooling, combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir and set aside.
4. Turn mixer (with butter mixture bowl attached) on low. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing completely. Mix in vanilla extract and almond extract (optional, but it adds great flavor). Add flour mixture to the wet ingredients and mix until combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
   Important: Cover bowl with plastic wrap and chill dough for at least 3 hours. I chilled mine overnight. It must be COMPLETELY cold before you bake it for these to turn out properly.
5. NOTE: to make it easier to scoop, let the dough chill for about 30 minutes so it's not too liquidy, then scoop your dough onto a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Cover with plastic and chill for several hours or overnight, then place on baking sheets as in step 7 below.)
6. Preheat oven to 350°. Line cookie sheets with parchment or silpat liners. If your dough has been chilling overnight, you may need to let it sit at room temp for about 20 minutes before you can scoop it. Even then, it’s gonna be an arm workout. It’s worth it!
7. Scoop out 1/4 cup sized balls and place 6-8 on a sheet. They don’t spread a lot, but they’re BIG cookies.
   Bake for about 11-12 minutes. They will be golden on the outside and still doughy on the inside - perfect! Let cool for 5 minutes, and then remove from pans to cool completely.

NOTES:

Note: several readers have commented that the dough is "dry" when scooping. If you've measured your flour correctly (spoon/leveling, not packing) then the reason for this is because of the chilling. The dough isn't dry so much as crumbly. Spending overnight in the refrigerator makes the dough really hard and hard to scoop. It's an arm workout, but it's worth it. Squish the dough together as much as possible (or let it warm up a little on the counter before scooping) and they'll still turn out fine! The note in step 5 will reduce this issue!