Chocolate Chip Cookies—The Classic Tollhouse

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This is the recipe that came from the bag of Nestle’s Toll House morsels back in the late 1950’s, which is how long my sister and I have been baking them. They are probably almost everyone’s favorite cookie, especially when warm from the oven. I have tried various permutations over a period of many years—with nuts, with raisins and chips, with oatmeal, with Craisins, with white chocolate, with mint chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, toffee bits, and chocolate chunks, to name a few—but for me, the classic is, without a doubt, superior to everything else I have tried.


I still whip up a batch, from time to time, when we are having a dairy meal because I would not dream of making them with anything but sweet butter. In fact, when Saul was stationed at the naval air station in Albany, Georgia, in the late sixties, I opened a tub of sweet butter and found it to be as white as snow. I was staying at the new apartment of friends Peter and Mary who had just married (Saul gave away the bride at the wedding in the synagogue in Albany because her family was in Corpus Cristi, Texas, and could not attend). I thought the Piggly Wiggly had mistakenly put vegetable shortening in the butter container because all the butter I had ever seen had been some shade of yellow. Mary couldn’t understand my consternation as she was used to seeing white butter in the South. It was the best, freshest butter I ever tasted and made the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made. Currently, my favorite chocolate chips are the semi-sweet ones from Trader Joe’s. I have experimented with flour as well. King Arthur Flour, which makes wonderful cakes, makes horrible cookies. Since that fiasco, I only buy unbleached Ceresota or Hecker’s Flour for baking.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 12 oz. chocolate chips
• 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar (packed)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1-1/2 tsp. water
• 2 large or extra-large eggs

Preheat oven to 375°F.

Sift flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.

With electric mixer, cream butter, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla and water.

Beat in the eggs, one at a time.

Add flour mixture and mix well.

Stir in the chips.

Drop by tablespoons full (I use a 1-1/2-inch diameter ice cream scoop) onto a greased cookie sheet.

Bake 10-12 minutes in conventional oven, or 7 to 9 minutes in a convection oven.

Makes approximately 100.