Okay, it was a grueling task, and one that everyone was so loth to participate in… HAHA… NOT! We enjoyed each and every test run. However, it didn’t take too long to find a goooood one! And I think it will be our new family recipe!

Moby Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

Melt butter, and let cool. Add sugars and cream. Add salt, soda, eggs, milk and vanilla and mix good. Then slowly add your flour until nice and stiff. Add chips. And then… CHILL…. FREEZE if you can stand it. It really helps to make a good cookie. Scoop onto a lightly sprayed cookie sheet with a small scoop and flash freeze for an hour or so. You can store the cookie balls in the freezer and just make a pan at a time… wonderful treat. Bake in a hot oven, 375 degrees for about 14 minutes if using frozen dough, or about 11-12 for chilled dough.

I have to say, three things work good for these cookies. 1.) FRESH BAKING SODA…. Yes, I have learned my lesson. A 4 year old box of soda is probably not the freshest ingrediant and it seems to loose a little of it’s cooking punch. Take the old box and pop in your fridge or use for cleaning! Add to dish water, pop a little in your washing machine too! Baking soda has a bazillion great uses and a new box every month or three is CHEAP. My box was 47 cents. Yeah. If you’re going to spend money on flour and sugar and chips and then your time… make sure you use fresh baking soda!!!

2.) More brown sugar to white sugar. This does seem to be the earmark of a good cookie recipe that you want to stand up a little better, rather than to spread. That and a little more flour seems to help bind the cookie a bit longer in the oven and that helps to prevent it from spreading tooooo fast.

3.) The Chill Factor. Chilling or freezing the dough really seems to help as well. I never would do this and as a result, my cookies were always like thin and wide. Chilling seems to help set up the butter and the other ingrediants a bit, and they hold together a bit longer in the oven, allowing the cookie to form a bit of a shell and then stay in place. It has no place to go but up, and that makes for the perfect cookie. Just yummy.

Now we did try this recipe with all butter, and one with all shortening and then one with half and half. Our results? Butter was the best tasting and actually the best looking. The half and half was a close second, but we all concluded that the shortening seemed to make them a little less homemade tasting and little more, well, factory tasting. Now to be fair, we didn’t try the butter flavored shortening, but to be honest, we don’t use a lot of shortening anyway, so I doubt we’ll give it a try. I am trying to develop a stable of family favorite based on a small category of staple products. Butter we always have, so I think we’ll stick with that.

All in all… a fun taste test!!! Hope you give our final winner a chance in your own family taste kitchen.