Chocolate Chip Cookies

Now that I have an oven that doesn’t burn things and a kitchen in which I can actually find things, life in the baking department is double the fun.
Take the search for the holy grail of chocolate chip cookie recipes. Over the years I must have baked hundreds of the darn things with not one batch being the chewy, crispy soft centred epitome of cookie perfection I usually hoped for as I sat on the kitchen floor watching them bake in the unreliable, frankly downright naughty oven I owned for the majority of my baking life.
And then came my cream beauty: a darling of a double oven affair with fan and convection options and a snazzy probably destined never to be used plate warmer affair to boot. Readers, I am in love. Not only is my oven handsome it also delivers cookies to die for.
So I can’t stop baking them. Last night found me in the kitchen at ten o’clock, so I could devour one perfect specimen for supper and again slaving over a hot stove this morning, so I could wrap a couple of cookies in layers of foil so they would still be warm at playtime for my little munchkin.  Something made possible by dividing the dough into tubs and chilling overnight ready to pop into the oven as and when required.
I have, in the past couple of weeks tried oodles of cookie recipes, taking out this and adding that until I have finally settled on a basic recipe that thrills my taste-buds and has my house scented with warm cookie love in fifteen minutes flat. I made the choice to combine unsalted butter with margarine because it really does make a difference to the texture and does away with the need to add extra salt. The recipe below is for chocolate chips, but I have also tried them with rose-syrup and pistachios, smarties and white buttons and they were all good.
So good in fact that they are gone in a flash…