The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

Growing up we had two go-to baked goods in our home: my Grammy's brownies and the chocolate chip cookies from the Joy of Cooking. The brownies were the perfect blend of cakey and fudgey, and the cookies were absolutely everything you want in a chocolate chip cookie: chewy, crispy, flavorful, and just heaven dunked into damn near anything. There were very few things I missed eating when I transitioned to a vegan lifestyle, and the few things I did crave (helloooo, ice cream) have either popped up on the market in vegan form (helloooo, Ben & Jerry's) or I've perfected making the vegan versions myself. The one hold out has been chocolate chip cookies. This spring marks 7 years since I went vegan, and in that time I have tried countless recipes for chocolate chip cookies, and they were never quite right, always too fluffy or cakey or too crispy or crumbly, and no amount of tinkering with the recipes yielded that exact texture, taste, or even smell that I knew I wanted.

This attempt was super tasty, but too crumbly and pillowy

But, you guys. I DID IT. I finally tinkered and toyed and trial-and-errored my way into the PERFECT chocolate chip cookie. It looks, smells, tastes, chews, crumbles, and crunches exactly like those JoC cookies, and my inner child is doing cartwheels as we speak. Best of all, I didn't end up having to use any unusual or finicky ingredients (I was getting pretty sure I was going to have to break out the aquafaba for this one), it's all stuff you probably have on hand already. So without further ado, the last chocolate chip recipe you will ever need:

Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

makes 30 cookies

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp corn starch

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup "butter" (I use Earth Balance), softened

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup almond milk

1 tbsp vanilla

3/4-1 cup chocolate chips

ice cubes

1. Preheat oven to 350.

2. Using stand or hand mixer, cream butter until uniformly soft and smooth, add in half of white sugar and cream. Add the other half of sugar, and cream again. Repeat with brown sugar.

3. Whisk together the flour, baking soda and powder, corn starch, and salt in one bowl, and combine vanilla and almond milk in another. Add flour to the creamed butter and sugar in thirds, alternating with almond milk, and beating until smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary.

4. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the chocolate chips.

5. Roll dough into 30 balls, flatten into discs about 1/2 in thick, and place on 2 unlined, ungreased cookie sheets.

6. Put 3-4 ice cubes on an oven safe pan or dish and put on lower rack of oven.

7. Put cookie sheets on middle rack of oven (if only one fits at a time, put one on an upper rack but make sure to swap cookie sheets halfway through baking) and bake for 12-14 minutes until golden brown and crisped at edges.

8. Let cool for a few minutes before transferring cookies to cooling racks.

9. Definitely eat a few of them warm.

10. Do your best to not eat the rest of them immediately.

And that's that! The dough can be made in advance and frozen, and the cookies also do well with freezing. I highly recommend eating them with ice cream, dunked in tea or coffee, or on their own as the tasty lil bits of heaven they are. Enjoy!