Chocolate Chip Cookies

America's best culinary contribution to the world comes in form of small round cookie having mini blast of chocolate in form of chocolate chips, yes I'm talking about chocolate chip cookies. P is crazy about Ben's cookies especially when served warm and soft and chewy. This will be the first time I shall be baking any cookies and as if being overly confident in my baking skills, I've already promised someone that I shall bake some Chocolate chip and Double chocolate chip cookies for them, which now makes me nervous.
I've adapted this recipe from a perfectly tried and tested site www.joyofbaking.com (minor changes to original recipe) and I should say this recipe truely rocks. Also I have halved the recipe from the site as I wanted to make a smaller batch at a time. The site has recipe for 4 dozen cookies while I made almost 2 dozen at one go. Cookies came out perfect and I shall let the pictures advocate themselves.

Sift together and keep aside.
1 cup + 1 tbs plain white flour/maida
3/4th tsp vanilla essence or vanilla extract (I used powdered form so added to flour mix, if you are using extract or essence add it along with egg to butter mix)
1/4th tsp salt
1/4th tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda

In a large bowl whisk 1/2 cup unsalted butter untill light and creamy. Add 3/4th cup sugar (can also use brown sugar and white sugar in 1:1 ratio to make 3/4th cup together), keep whisking it for about 3-5 minutes or untill the mix feels fluffy. Add in 1 whole egg at this stage and whisk for few more minutes. Use a hand held mixie for this whole process if in hurry. I prefer to beat this mix with wire whisk only and the process takes no more than 10 mins.

Before proceeding further, preheat oven to 375 degrees F(190 degrees C) with rack in center of oven. Line two baking sheets with aluminum foil/parchment paper, I prefer aluminum foil.

Now add in the sifted flour mix to the butter mix and using your hand mix in to form a soft fluffy dough. It take not much of an effort to do this, folding flour in butter mixture using fingers will suffice. now add in 3/4th cup Hershey's semi sweet chocolate chips.

Divide the dough in 25 chunks and roughly form a semi flat balls and place them on the baking sheets 1 inch apart. Bake for 12-18 minutes or till cookie edges turn golden brown. Keep a contstant eye on cookies after 12 minutes as these delicate goodies can burn very easily and cooking time varies for every oven. Mine took 16 minutes.

Dunk it in milk or just carry a few to enjoy during your drive to office, nothing beats this small treat in itself.