These chocolate chip cookies are delicious and easy to make. They don't require much time to prepare (20 - 25 minutes) and are perfect for sharing with friends or enjoying on your own. If you want to cut down on preparation time, you can even just enjoy the cookie dough without having to bake them. Following these simple instructions will help you bake an amazing batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Let's get started!

Step 1: Assemble Your Ingredients

For this recipe you will need the following ingredients:

1 cup of softened butter

2 ¾ cups of flour

1 cup of sugar

½ cup of brown sugar

1 teaspoon of salt

1 teaspoon of baking soda

1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

2 cups of chocolate chips

2 eggs

You will also need a mixing bowl, a spoon for mixing, a small bowl, access to an oven, various measuring cups and a teaspoon, a cookie sheet, a hot pad, and a spatula. You will need to accurately measure out various ingredients and mix them together.

Step 2: Preheat the Oven

Before beginning, make sure to preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Preheating the oven can take up to 10 or 15 minutes, so make sure that you turn the oven on before you begin mixing ingredients together.

Do not attempt to bake the cookies without first preheating the oven as this will ruin your batch of cookies.

Step 3: Mix Dry Ingredients

First, make sure that your butter is softened, but not melted. If needed, place the butter in the microwave for 15 to 20 seconds to make it easier to mix. Just make sure that the butter doesn't melt in the microwave.

Add 1 cup of sugar and ½ cup of brown sugar to the bowl with the softened butter. Be sure to lightly pack the brown sugar into the measuring cup. This can be done by simply pressing down on the sugar in the measuring cup to compact it. Proceed to cream the ingredients together by mixing them steadily with your mixing spoon.

Even though it is softened, the butter can be difficult to mix in this step. Just keep stirring and it will eventually mix together as shown in the second picture above.

Step 4: Adding Vanilla and Eggs

Now that the butter and sugars are creamed, it’s time to add the vanilla extract. Measure out 1 teaspoon of vanilla and add it to your mixing bowl as shown in the first picture above.

Set aside a separate bowl that will be used for the eggs. Crack the two eggs into this second bowl and dispose of the shells. Be sure not to drop any pieces of the shells in with the eggs.

If you do drop shells into the eggs, make sure to fish them out using a fork or your fingers (if they are clean). This is why we crack the eggs into a separate bowl, just to be safe.

Once the eggs are cracked and free of eggshells, add them to your mixing bowl. Stir in the newly added eggs and vanilla until they are well mixed together, as shown in the final picture above.

Step 5: Adding Salt and Baking Soda

Measure out 1 teaspoon of salt and add it to the mixture. Also measure out 1 teaspoon of baking soda and put it in the mixture, along with the salt. After adding these, stir the bowl a bit until they are well mixed.

As with all dry ingredients, be sure to accurately measure the amounts you are adding. Too much or too little of any ingredient could ruin the cookies and nobody wants that.

Step 6: Add the Flour

Measure out 2 3/4 cups of flour and add them to the mixture. Proceed to stir all of the ingredients together until they are completely mixed.

This step may take some time and patience as the mixture will feel very dry. This is how it should feel, do not add any extra liquid to the mixture. As long as you measured all of the ingredients accurately, everything will eventually mix together. Just be patient and keep stirring.

Step 7: Add the Chocolate Chips

Once the flour is stirred in, measure and add 2 cups of chocolate chips. Stir in the chocolate chips so that they are spread out throughout the cookie dough.

Milk chocolate chips are the optimal choice for these cookies, but they can be substituted with semi-sweet or even dark chocolate chips if preferred.
If you are feeling adventurous, feel free to add 1/2 cup of chopped nuts and stir them in with the chocolate chips at this point.

Step 8: Prepare the Cookie Sheet

Prepare the cookie sheet by either spraying it with cooking oil or placing a sheet of parchment paper on the tray.

If you decide to spray cooking oil, make sure to cover the entire tray, but don't spray too much or the bottom of the cookies won't cook properly.

Once the cookie sheet is prepared, you can begin placing cookie dough on the tray. To do this, you will grab a small piece of dough and roll it into a ball that is about 1 1/2 inches in diameter and then place it on the cookie sheet. The size of the ball of dough doesn't have to be exact, you just don't want the cookies to be too big or too small.

Be careful not to place the balls of dough too close together on the sheet or they will expand and crash into each other as they bake.

This is also an excellent time to taste a sample of the cookie dough. Make sure you save enough for baking though!

Step 9: Bake the Cookies

Place the cookie sheet in the oven. Be careful not to touch any parts on the inside of the oven, as it will be very hot.

Set a timer for 10 minutes and let the oven work its magic. During this time, you can wait patiently or you can begin rolling up balls of dough for the next batch of cookies. Depending on the size of your cookies, this recipe will make around 36 cookies.

The dough might still seem mushy after ten minutes of baking. This is normal and they will harden once they have cooled.

Step 10: Remove the Cookies and Enjoy

After ten minutes of baking, the cookies will have expanded and flattened out a little bit. Carefully remove the cookies from the oven using a hot pad. Be careful because the tray and the oven will be very hot. Set the cookie sheet on top of the oven or on some other surface where the hot tray won't cause damage.

Gently remove the cookies from the cookie sheet using a spatula and place them on a plate or wire rack so that they can cool properly.

Give the cookies a few minutes to cool and solidify. Then pour yourself a nice glass of milk and reward your hard work with a delicious cookie!