For a while now, I was planning to learn how to make the softest and chewiest chocolate chip cookies. I was searching for the recipes and it looked quite easy but there was one quite big problem: where the hell would I buy chocolate chips?! I checked the baking section of many stores but there were just some crushed chocolates but no chips… Just when I decided to make crushed chocolate cookies, I remembered the life saver little store: behnford’s.. And yes, of course I could find chips there.. And so, I could finally bake the easiest but at the same time yummiest cookies!

Incidentally, that Tuesday was the birthday of a dear friend, so I thought, YES, it’s a good day to bake my first chocolate chip cookies and give them as a gift to my friend. So I looked for the best box to put them in, the best paper to fill in the box and the best little scarf to gift wrap the box filled with cookies. And I went straight home to bake them.

The baked the cookies in 3 batches. There were about 30 cookies in the end. Actually, normally you can get up to 40-48 cookies from this recipe. However, when I made the first batch, I did not know that the raw cookie balls would spread enormously while baking and turn into giant cookies. So the actual amount of the cookies was a bit less than it was supposed to be.

And then of course since I like eating and baking funny things, I added colourful M&Ms in the cookies apart from the chocolate chips. They looked so sweet!! I was jumping up and down in my apartment alone, when I ate the first baked cookie!!

I gave the gift to my lovely friend and she got so happy eating them. We met in Mbar and we just ate all of the cookies up in a few minutes! It was so nice to see her expression turning to happiness!

So, if you are thinking of what to give as a gift to a friend, maybe you could try these? Believe, they make the birthdays so much more fun!

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Ingredients:

170 gr butter at room temperature
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cornstarch (maissitärkkelys)
1/2 tsp salt
M&Ms (as much as you like)
Chocolate chips (as much as you like)

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1. In a bowl, put the butter (if you cut it in a few pieces, it would be easier), brown and white sugar and mix them with an electric mixer until they get rather fluffy.

2. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix.

3. In a separate bowl, put flour, baking soda, cornstarch and salt and mix it a bit with a spoon or a whisk.

4. Add the flour mixture to the other ingredients and mix. I added the flour mixture gradually, in 3 parts, to make my life easier. Mix it until you get a fully incorporated dough.

5. Add chocolate chips and M&Ms. Mix it with a spoon, try not to crack the chocolate chips or M&Ms (that’s why you just mix it with a spoon not the electric mixer!!).

6. Cover the dough with a wet towel and leave it to rest, for half an hour.

7. Preheat the oven to 175C.

8. Put a baking sheet on an oven tray. Take a piece from the dough, a little bit smaller than a walnut size. Remember, they will spread while baking. Make a disc shape out of that piece with your hand and place it on the tray. If you want the colourful M&Ms and chocolate chips to be seen on the surface of the cookies then just add a few on each cookie piece before you put them in the oven. Make sure the chips and M&Ms added later stick well to the cookie.

9. Put the tray in the oven and cook for about 10 minutes. In the original recipe, it was strongly emphasised not to leave the cookies in the oven for more than 10 minutes. But in my oven it took about 12 minutes to bake. I took them out when they start to get just very little brownish on the edges. When you take them out of the oven first, they are quite soft. Just slide the sheet with cookies on, to the table and let them cool for a few minutes. Then, with a spatula put them side by side on a big plate and prepare the next batch and so on. When they are cooler, you can just put them in a big bowl or a box etc.. The cookies would stay fresh in a closed bowl, in room temperature for about a week.

Here I put also the photos of the gift that I made, in case you got curious!

Enjoy!!!

(original recipe is from http://sallysbakingaddiction.com)