My Chocolate Chip Cookies for Sweet New Zealand

It really doesn’t feel like it, but I got married one year ago today. Which means that one year and three weeks ago, I was locked in my kitchen, making batch after batch of my favourite chocolate chip cookies.

Lemme splain.

It's very hard to get past this stage without consuming the entire bowl of dough.

See, I’m American and Jonno is Kiwi, and we wanted to bring in elements of both our heritages to the food that we were serving, just to have some kind of direction to go in. We really went for this little mini theme in the deserts though. Our wedding cake was a traditional Christmas cake, Jonno’s favourite, made by Jonno’s mum. So I said, “Well then I have to have my favourite dessert in there somehow too!” We had the caterers do a bit of a dessert buffet with little mini bites of different things, like New York cheesecake (I die for this), kiwifruit pavlova (pillows of heaven), brownies (how could we not?), and a lemon curd-passionfruit shooter (apropos of absolutely nothing, but it was a hit). 

The pink cookies, or at least we tried to make them pink!  Still delicious though.

And I made four batches of chocolate chip cookies. How I decided that there needed to be four batches, which is approximately 4 hand-sized cookies for each of the 40 guests we invited, I’ll never know. What I do know is that we ended up taking about three quarters of them home with us. Not because they weren’t good though! I think it might have had something to do with how much other food there was to be consumed at the same time. I don’t think I took all that other food into account when I did my calculations!

But it worked out in the end though, because we were able to bring those cookies as our contribution for a BBQ and another party, which meant less cooking for me to do post-wedding and pre-Christmas/packing to move, so that made me very happy.

I think my love affair with all things chocolate chip cookie began back when at the rollerskating rink when I was 9 or 10. My best friend and I would spend Friday night skating around a stinky gymnasium, gossiping and giggling and working on our backward skating. Then we would risk life and limb and walk downstairs in our skates, just to buy some warm magical chocolate chip cookies. It made all the risk of skates flying out from under us as we gingerly side-stepped down two flights of stairs totally worth it. Totally. For sure.

These cookies really are all that and a box of chocolates. I’ve given out the recipe so many times, it’s more than I can count in my brain. I’ve made them in blue for the staff at a fundraising event I was a part of, and they went so fast that I never got any. I’ve made them in pink just for fun, and my workmates devoured them. They’re addicting. Kind of like heroin, but they don’t leave tell-tale track marks on your arms. Just crumbs in your lap. Deliciously addicting crumbs.

White chocolate chip Wish cookies. 

The trick to these cookies is under-baking them, so that they’re soft and moist and just melt in your mouth. You can freeze the dough and bake up to a year later – just roll the dough into a log, cover in baking paper and stick in a sealed plastic bag, and when you want to bake, just slice the dough into 8mm/1/4” slices, place on baking sheet, and you’re away laughing. And giggling maniacly.

You could substitute white chocolate chips for the chocolate ones, like I did above in the blueish-green cookies.  You could use M&M's too.  You could smother some vanilla ice cream between two of these puppies and then roll in even more chocolate chips for a sinfully cold treat.  You could even get cheeky and substitute another kind of flavouring in for the vanilla - strawberry perhaps?  This recipe is but the basic canvas for your artistic expression, rendered in butter, sugar, and chocolate.

But please, for the love of all things delicious, use good-quality chocolate chips, not the cheapo ones made using palm oil or whatever crap they’re putting in them these days. The good stuff, people. Nestle or Whittaker’s should do the trick.

I'm submitting this as part of Sweet New Zealand, a monthly blogging event for Kiwi foodies, hosted this month by the lovely Mairi at Toast!

Christina’s Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 225g (2 1/4 cups) all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 225g (2 sticks, 1/2 pound) butter, softened
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 350g or more (2 cups, 12 oz package) semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Combine flour, baking soda and salt in small bowl.
2. Beat butter, sugars and vanilla in large mixer bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition; gradually beat in flour mixture.
3. Stir in chocolate. Try not to eat too much of the dough now!  Drop by rounded tablespoon onto ungreased baking sheets.
4. Bake in preheated 190 C/475 F oven for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand for 2 minutes; remove to wire racks to cool completely.
5. Cookies will keep for as long as you can stand not eating them, store in a sealed container.

Apologies for the crap photos, they are all pre-iPhone, and I haven't made these babies in a while for fear of taking them over to the corner and eating them all myself.