The fall semester of my senior year of college is about to start! After a whole summer of traveling and restaurant food (I’m not complaining by the way), I’ve been seriously craving some homemade food. As I started to pack up my stuff to move back into my house on campus, I came across this chocolate chip cookie recipe. Here’s the thing: the Irish cuisine was fantastic, and the New York pizza was cheesy amazingness…but nothing hits the spot like a homemade chocolate chip cookie. And these are the very best.

A little history on these cookies: I spent many semesters making a “study snack” of break-n-bake cookies in the wee hours of the morning. They were fast, cheap, and easy. But once I discovered these cookies, I never went back. They are so good that I’m willing to take the extra 30 minutes to mix up the dough and wait for their chocolatey goodness to bake. While 30 minutes doesn’t sound like much, when its 2 am and there is an accounting final the next morning, I need all the time I can get to study! One thing is for sure, nothing does a better job of consoling this hungry, chocolate-craving college student at 2 am than these cookies. Plus, they don’t require an electric mixer!

Gather up: 

1 stick unsalted butter

¾ cup packed brown sugar
¾ cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
12 oz. semisweet chocolate chips

2 ¼ cups all purpose flour
¾ tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

 

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Melt butter in a microwave safe container. While the butter cools, combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl.

Combine butter with remaining ingredients in a large bowl. Be careful not to overmix the wet ingredients! They should be just combined.

Stir the chocolate chips into your wet ingredients.

Dump dry ingredients into wet ingredients and mix with a wooden spoon. Do not overmix! Again, ingredients should be  just blended. We’ve found that overmixing leads to flat cookies, and when done right, these cookies are dense and fluffy. YUM.

Using a cookie scoop, spoon, or your hands, make 1.5-inch balls of dough, and drop them on the cookie sheet.

Cook for 10-12 minutes. After removing from oven, allow to cool for 1-2 minutes, and then move to a cooling rack.

And there you have it: the most amazing chocolate chip cookies ever, a.k.a the ones that replaced break-n-bake!

Recipe from Food Network.