#27. Decide on a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe.

I think every household should have a good chocolate chip cookie recipe (or proximity to a grocery store that sells break-and-bake dough...or, you know, actual cookies). I love to bake, so I prefer homemade cookies to pre-made cookies or dough. (I don't discriminate, though. Cookies are one of my favorite desserts, so I will eat them in just about any form.) But somehow, in all my baking adventures, I have never decided on a go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe, and I am on a quest to resolve that. I tend to be a bit obsessive methodical in my decision-making, and since I love cookies so much, this will certainly be no exception. My plan is to test several recipes and grade them, and the one with the highest grade will become my go-to.

Here are the ground rules:

I will not be considering "alternative" recipes that might include ingredients like nuts or caramel. I may test recipes with some sort of enhancer like vanilla pudding, maybe even cream cheese, but nothing that changes the overall flavor. Just straight-up, classic chocolate chip cookie goodness.

These are the factors by which I will grade each recipe (1-5 rating for each item):

• Taste: Like I said, it has to have an unmistakable chocolate chip cookie taste. (Duh.)
• Texture: I like my cookies to be somewhat thick, slightly crisp around the edges, and soft and chewy in the middle. So that's what I'll be looking for.
• Convenience: How many steps? How many ingredients? Are the ingredients ones that I already have on-hand, with the exception of chocolate chips?
• WW-friendliness: How many WeightWatchers points per cookie? I'm not expecting them to be health food or anything, but would prefer them to be as low in points as possible. According to my tracker, the average for a homemade chocolate chip cookie is 2 points.
• Accuracy: I will be following each recipe exactly, so what I'm looking for here is if my attempt looks like the photo and/or lives up to any hype surrounding the recipe.

So, now that that's out of the way, let's get to it! The first recipe in my quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie comes to us from Betty Crocker.

This is Tom's last week of seminary classes (yay!), so I made these last night for him to share with his classmates. The recipe was pretty simple. The dough came together nicely in the stand mixer, and the only thing we had to buy for it was a bag of chocolate chips. (Actually, Tom went out and bought more flour and brown sugar last night because I ran out, but that's stuff we usually have in-stock.) The cookies themselves turned out pretty well. I forgot to take a picture of them while they were cooling, but here they are all packed up and ready to go to school...

Mine spread out a bit more than the ones in the photo, so they weren't very thick, but they tasted great, and they were still crisp on the edges and chewy in the middle. I'm guessing they spread so much because of all the butter; I used 3 whole sticks. It was a big recipe (72 cookies), so I guess it wasn't that much in the grand scheme of things, but it did make them pretty greasy, which is somewhat unappealing as far as texture. It came out to 3 WW points per cookie, which isn't terrible but could be better.

Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies from Betty Crocker

Taste: 5

Texture: 3

Convenience: 5

WW-friendliness: 4

Accuracy: 4

Final grade: 21/25