The Best Soft N' Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

By Chasing Lovely

YOU GUYS—WE FOUND THEM.

The most perfect, ooey-gooey, foodgasm-inducing chocolate chip cookies. The kind of cookies that melt in your mouth and warm you from the inside out. The kind of cookies you'll want to go that extra mile for (literally and figuratively—LOL!) because O-M-G they are golden brown and baked to perfection! You guys know we take our cookies very seriously. We love cookies so much they made it into our bio.

Finding the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe was no easy task. We'd been using a family recipe for years but always felt something was lacking. It wasn't until this spring that Chloe finally put her finger on it: the "cookie" part of our chocolate chippers just wasn't...great. "I want the actual cookie to taste sooo good that it would be delicious even without the chocolate chips!" she explained. So she set out to do just that—scouring Google and Pinterest, analyzing ingredients and reading hundreds upon hundreds of reviews until she finally found THE ONE. And let me tell you: It was love at first bite.

So what makes this cookie superior to all others? What do we look for in a cookie?

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Chew-factor

The perfect chocolate chip cookie is never rock hard and never too doughy. You don't want it so thin that it overcooks, nor do you want it so thick that the inside is still raw (yuck). You want it soft in the middle with just the right amount of crispiness around the edges.

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Flavor Flav

What really set this chocolate chip cookie apart from all the others was how sweet and flavorful the actual cookie part was. Like Chloe said, a cookie shouldn't just taste good because it has chocolate chips in it! The cookie needs to be able to stand alone and taste BOMB.

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The "Day After" Test

No, not that kind! The day after COOKIE TEST. The kind where you wake up the next morning and think, hmmm...what shall I eat for breakfast? Wait—aren't those the LEFTOVER COOKIES I MADE LAST NIGHT?! How convenient! JK, you won't actually have any leftover cookies bcuz who actually has that kind of restraint?? But if by some miracle you do, next-day cookies should still be chewy. For this reason, Chloe and I usually prefer to make fewer cookies and save the extra dough in the refrigerator so we can have fresh cookies the next day! But if you decide to bake them all at once, remember to SAVE THEM IN TUPPERWARE. Leaving them out on a plate will literally ensure rock-hard cookies the next day :(

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Calories

PSYCH! Is there really such a thing as a "healthy cookie" anyways? I think we're all better off just admitting to ourselves that when we eat cookies it's a DESSERT. Rather than modifying the recipe and stuffing our faces full of "healthy cookies" when what we really want are the ones with two whole sticks of butter and chocolate chips galore (which we end up binging on after we eat all our healthy cookies...haha). Disagree? THEN WHY DID YOU CLICK ON THIS RECIPE...HMM? THOUGHT SO. #HonestHour

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The BEST Soft N' Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

by Chloe and Taylor Turner

The perfect ooey-gooey chocolate chip cookies, brought to you by Chasing Lovely. Recipe modified from The Happy Money Saver who got it from hereistherecipe.com

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups Flour (we use whole wheat flour since we don't keep bleached flour in our household)

• 1 1/4 tsp Baking Soda

• 1 1/2 tsp Baking Powder

• 3/4 tsp Salt

• 1 1/14 cups Butter

• 1 1/4 cups Brown Sugar

• 1 cups plus 2 Tbsp Sugar

• 2 Large Eggs

• 2 tsp Vanilla Extract

• 1/2 (11.5 oz) bag Milk Chocolate Chips

• 1/2 bag of * Peanut Butter Cups

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Combine flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Mix and set aside.

3. Cream butter and sugars together with a mixer until just blended. Use room temperature butter. DO NOT MELT OR MICROWAVE YOUR BUTTER!

4. Add eggs one at a time, mixing well after each addition.

5. Add vanilla.

6. Add dry ingredients and mix on low speed. Mix until combined—do not overmix.

7. Stir in chocolate chips.

8. For big cookies, use a 4 tbsp size scoop to form your cookies. But feel free to experiment with the size to suit your taste!

9. Place on cookie sheet and bake 10-17 minutes. Each oven heats differently, and the size of your cookies will make a difference. If you refrigerated your dough, take that into consideration as well. We recommend keeping a close eye on the first batch to ensure your cookies bake to golden perfection.

10. Once out of the oven, place cookies on a cooling rack.

11. Save any remaining dough in the refrigerator. We prefer doing this over baking all our cookies at one time. That way we can make cookies the next day and they'll be baked fresh!

Yield: 28 large cookies

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Folk-pop duo Chasing Lovely combine haunting harmonies, powerful melodies, and insightful lyrics to create a truly captivating acoustic performance. With their latest EP, "Things We Don't Talk About" (July 2017), they candidly open up about both personal and cultural conflict, addressing subjects normally considered taboo. The sisters, who grew up in Minneapolis, moved to Nashville in 2011 and spent six years cutting their teeth in Music City before relocating to Atlanta in April 2017. Chloe and Taylor have been touring across the continental United States the past four years and have had the privilege of working alongside producers and musicians who have worked with Mumford & Sons, Joy Williams, Ingrid Michaelson, Meghan Trainor, Gungor, and Ben Rector. Chasing Lovely's mission is to provoke thought, promote understanding, and capture both glimmers of light and darkness as they share the deeply moving human experience through song.

"Chloe and Taylor are able to weave a vivid tale with their voices and light acoustic guitar that’ll give you goosebumps. This folky pair advocate working toward positive change, and their music is a fantastic reflection of that." –Nicole Ortiz, Audiofemme