If you bake with kids, you know the deep pain of a child waiting for butter to soften. It takes FOREVER–especially in the cooler months when you really want to be baking cookies. I feel your pain and this recipe is here to rescue us both. It has just the basic ingredients and–to make it EXTRA easy–it uses butter softened in the microwave. And, if that wasn’t enough to tempt you–it also only takes one bowl.
After you soften your butter in the microwave, you hand mix the sugars in, followed by the rest of the ingredients. The softened butter makes it easy to get everything combined without having to lug out a heavy stand mixer. Add in the chocolate chips at the end and you are ready to bake!
As I always do, I use a cookie disher to portion my cookies. My favorite for cookies with chocolate chips or other chunky stuff is the 1.5 Tablespoon size.
I baked them until the centers were just set and non glossy. I like a nice chewy cookie and, much like eggs, if you bake them until they are done in the oven, they’ll be overcooked when you want to eat them.
In my continuing adventures in freezing, I froze about half of my dough by plopping it onto a sheet of parchment paper and shaping it into a log with my pastry scraper: Then I wrapped the parchment log into cling film and put it in the freezer. I’m hoping for easy slice and bakes in my future!
In the end, these cookies are pure classic perfection. Simple ingredients, lots of chocolate chips, and a buttery softness to the dough. Since the butter and sugar weren’t creamed together, these cookies stayed nice and dense and decidedly cookie-ish rather than any cakey qualities. I don’t know if this cookie could really be improved on.
One Bowl Chocolate Chip Cookies
3/4 cup unsalted butter, cut into chunks
2/3 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
generous 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
One bag (10-11 oz) of chocolate chips (I use milk chocolate chips)Preheat oven to 350 and line two sheet pans with parchment paper.
Put the butter in a large (microwave safe) bowl. Heat the butter in small increments (10 seconds or so), stirring in between each. You want the butter to be nicely softened but not melted or runny. Add the sugars and vigorously stir them into the butter until well blended. Stir in the egg, vanilla, salt, and baking soda thoroughly. Add the flour and stir until just combined. Then fold in the chips.
If the dough is very soft, you can add a few more tablespoons of flour to stiffen it up (or just put it in the fridge for a few minutes while you clean up).
Use a disher to portion the cookies onto the sheet pans and bake until set (start checking at 8-10 minutes but use your own discretion based on the size of cookies you end up with).
