Borrowed Butter Makes Better Chocolate Chip Cookies

Our neighbors borrowed butter from us last Sunday and later we found out why. They wanted to make chocolate chip cookies. When we got the call it was for margarine. The funny thing is I asked the Mother the next day if the butter worked out okay in their recipe.  She said they only buy and only use butter, but her health conscious daughter wondered if they were perhaps the only family who prefers butter, when the first neighbor they asked only had margarine.  She decided she'd ask us for margarine, which they would have used, if they didn't find butter.  My husband told their daughter we only had butter:) Butter does make better chocolate chip cookies!

They were soooo delicious. When I called today for the recipe, she said, "We have all the ingredients if you need to borrow any!" Maybe I should borrow some butter:) It turns out this is the Dad's recipe he's tweaked over the years. He said he always triples this recipe. I'm glad he did, because it means we got to taste them too. And now you can too, since he's given me permission to post them here. Now go borrow some butter or whatever you don't have enough of. Looks like I need more chocolate chips this time :) Enjoy!

Geoff's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Mix the wet ingredients together first.
1 cup butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 c granulated sugar
The secret comes in creaming the butter and sugar a very long time in your mixer, so let it blend for 5-7 minutes until it's almost frothy. A former neighbor, who is also a great chocolate chip and other cookie maker says, his secret is to cream cold butter with the sugar.
Now add 2 eggs and
1 t vanilla.
Blend again for almost just as long, until it looks more like a nougat texture.
Mix the dry ingredients together.
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 1/2 c flour
Mix flour mixture in with butter mixture with your hands. Feel the texture to determine if you need to add more flour. If you add more flour, add a pinch more baking soda too. You do NOT want it to be too creamy. If you wish, you can add oatmeal flour. When you blend oatmeal in the blender it makes oat flour. If you add that instead of extra flour, it makes it so the dough just barely stays together. This is a good alternate taste too.
Lastly add a 12 oz. package of chocolate chips.
His favorite chips are Ghiradelli, but any chips will do of course. He also likes to use more chips than is normally called for. He also alternates milk and semi-sweet in the same batch. I prefer this flavor of half and half as well.
If you want double chocolate chip cookies, here are a few alternatives:
Grate a big chocolate bar in to the dough. It makes it look brown and give a chocolate taste all the way through the cookie. Or sprinkle in 2 T of cocoa powder into the mix.
Make good sized cookies and bake at 375 degrees for about 8 minutes.

My favorite way to eat my chocolate chip cookies is hot with a mug of cold milk. I use a mug since it's half the height of a glass and I can dip a piping hot chocolate chip cookie straight into the ice cold milk and then eat it. Perfect combination.