
The other night we were invited to a friends’ house for an impromptu dinner – with no need to bring a contributing dish. What?! These friends were just wanting to love on our family and spend time together in community. How awesome is that??? An evening filled with conversation, kids running around playing and adults catching up on life. This is what sharing a meal is really all about. That being said, I struggle to just show up at someone’s house for a meal without having some sort of food in hand. I looked through the pantry, found some basic baking ingredients and whipped up some chocolate chip cookies.

A classic, simple dessert that is always a crowd pleaser. One of the neat things about chocolate chip cookies is how many variations are out there. And people have strong opinions on what they prefer. Soft batch (like this recipe), chewy or crisp. The way to vary the outcome is through changing the flour, the sweetener and the leavening agent. The other thing I like to do is use more than one kind of chocolate in my cookies just to add a little more depth to each bite. If you’re ever creating your own recipe, play around with these variables and see what you come up with!

Tips:
- If you have left your cookies out too long when cooling them and they end up dry, put them in a zip lock bag with a slice of bread. You’ll be amazed at how much moisture those cookies will absorb!
- If you don’t need three dozen cookies at one time, you can scoop the dough into individual servings and freeze it. Later on, you can pull out what you need and bake just a few at a time.

Soft Batch Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients
- 2 cups bread flour
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup pure maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 12 oz semisweet chocolate chips
- 4 oz 70% cocao extra bittersweet chocolate bar, chopped into chunks
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
- In a medium bowl, combine flour, salt and baking soda. Set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat sugar with butter. Add eggs, maple syrup and vanilla. Ingredients will not fully combine just yet. Mix in dry ingredients 1 cup at a time, until all ingredients are fully combined. Stir in chocolate chips.
- Scoop tablespoon-sized mounds of cookie dough onto parchment lined baking sheet. Leave 2-inches between the cookies. Bake for 8 to 9 minutes or until edges are golden brown. Remove cookie sheet from oven and transfer the cookies from the parchment to cooling racks.

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