The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Total active time: approximately 1 hour

Ingredients

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour

1⅔ cups bread flour

1¼ teaspoons baking powder

1½ teaspoons baking soda

1½ teaspoons coarse salt

2½ sticks (1¼ cups) unsalted butter, room temperature

1¼ cups plus 2 tablespoons dark brown sugar, packed

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs, room temperature

2 teaspoons pure vanilla bean paste

½ cup high quality chocolate chips (I love See’s Candies chocolate chips)

½ cup dark chocolate chips

½ cup mini chocolate chips

coarse sea salt

Instructions

1. Sift together the cake flour, bread flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into a medium sized bowl and set aside.
2. In the bowl of your mixer, cream the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until light and fluffy, about 3-5 minutes.
3. Add in the eggs, one at a time, and scrape down the bowl after each egg.
4. Add in the vanilla and mix for a couple of seconds.
5. Add the dry ingredients one cup at a time. Make sure you put the mixer on low for this!
6. Add all three kinds of chocolate, and mix by hand or with the mixer on low.
7. Scrape the dough from the mixer, and put it into a container. Cover the dough with plastic wrap, and make sure to seal the wrap onto the dough. Then put the lid on the container, the container in the fridge, and do your best not to touch it for 24 hours! (Admittedly, usually a spoonful of dough goes missing in my apartment sometime between when it goes in the fridge and when it’s time to bake, but what can ya do?) Leave it in the fridge for at least 24 hours - longer is fine.
8. When you are ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Using a medium cookie scoop (or whatever size you want, really - just adjust the baking time accordingly), scoop out balls of dough.
  - For the {Dark Chocolate-Covered Pretzel Slim}-Stuffed version, do the following after scooping the dough:
    - 1. Break the dough ball in half, and flatten each half in the palm of your hand.
      2. Break a pretzel slim in half. Put one half on one of the flattened dough circles, and place the other dough circle on top.
      3. Seal up the edges of the dough around the pretzel. If you need more dough to form the seal, feel free to add more.

9. Put the scoops round side down on the baking sheet.

10. Sprinkle the cookies with a bit of coarse sea salt.

11. Bake 8-10 minutes, or until the edges are brown and the middles look slightly undercooked.

12. Let the cookies cool for a couple minutes on the baking sheet, then move them to wire cooling rack to finish cooling. Do your best not to eat them all immediately because they will be super tempting!