Tips To Bake That Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Have you ever seen the pictures of those perfect chocolate chip cookies in your favorite recipe book, or on display plates in a candy store window? Have you longed to be able to produce such a marvelous looking and tempting plate of homemade cookies for your family, neighbors or friends? Consequently, have you ever been disappointed to discover that the cookies that come out of your oven never quite look as inviting and enticing as the pictures or store cookies do?

If you have ever experienced that, then you can be comforted to know you are not alone, not by a long shot. The fact is that those are staged pictures and there were probably only a dozen cookies chosen for the picture out of hundreds that were made for the photo shoot. Nobody in their home kitchen can compete with that, in addition to the skills and talents of well paid food stylists whose job it is to make everything look delectable.

But, the fact of the matter is that how your chocolate chip cookies look, as compared to professional photographs in a magazine or book, is not nearly as important as how they taste. Add to that the fact that your kids will remember the loving good spirits and the fabulous aroma emanating from the kitchen much longer than they will remember how those cookies looked.

And, the same is most likely true of anyone you share those cookies with. If you baked them with love and shared them with friends, neighbors, co-workers or family members, then the cookies filled with dark chocolate chips, or white chocolate chips for that matter, will no doubt be a hit, of course barring any major wrong turns when following the recipe.

Are you hoping to have every batch of cookies made with chocolate chips come turn out to be wonderfully soft and chewy? If so, then you are like most people and the good news is that making the perfect chocolate chip cookie really is fairly simple and not that hard, especially if you let go of the expectation that each one will look like it belongs on a magazine cover or tucked into gourmet gift baskets. The trick is simply to have a good recipe in hand and to follow it as closely as possible.

One problem with some recipes for cookies made with chocolate chips is that they instruct the baker to drop a spoonful of batter onto the cookie sheet and then put them into the oven until they appear to be a nice golden brown. Unfortunately, that advice is all wrong and by the time you see the top of the cookies turning brown the bottoms have already gotten overcooked and are dark brown or even burned. From that point of being over-baked, when you let them cool they will end up getting hard and becoming more like jaw breakers than the handmade chocolates treat you intended for them to be.

It is easy enough to remedy this common outcome and all that you need to do is adjust the baking time. Usually taking two minutes off the time recommended in the recipe will do the trick, but you might need to do a couple experimental batches by adjusting the size of the cookie drop and the time. With experimentation and patience, you will undoubtedly be baking up many batches of chocolate chip cookies that will be a real hit with everyone who gets to enjoy them.