Gemma shares her ultimate chocolate chip cookies recipe

Hi Bold Bakers! Over 10 plus years of working as a pastry chef, I have made my fair share of chocolate chip cookies. But finally, I have found the ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe. I'm gonna break it down for you and tell you what makes this recipe so good compared to others. The written recipe for this can be found on BiggerBolderBaking.com. Okay, let's start out in a large bowl. The first ingredient we're going to add in is our flour. And then next we're adding in salt. Now salt is so important in baking because it acts as a seasoning and brings out the flavors of the other ingredients. So in you go. And then next some baking soda, now this is the raising agent and it's what makes these cookies really beautiful and crackle on top. So add that in, and then with a wooden spoon just stir all these ingredients together. So now we're gonna set the dry ingredients aside and we're gonna work on our wet ingredients. So now here I have my cold butter, now I get asked all the time, salted or unsalted butter? I always use salted, that little bit of extra salt adds great flavor to whatever you're baking. Now what you want to do is melt this so you can put it into the microwave or over a bain marie. So into our melted butter we're going to add in some white sugar, and then my secret weapon, some brown sugar. Now this gives your cookies a lovely caramel kind of a flavor. Now if you don't have brown sugar you can always make your own and there's a recipe on Bigger Bolder Baking, or you can replace it with white sugar. Then just take a wooden spoon and mix these ingredients together. Okay so now into this lovely mix I'm going to crack in my eggs. Now if you do not eat eggs, do not worry, you can always check my egg substitute chart and you can see what you can use for cookies. And then of course if you watch Bigger Bolder Baking, you'll know I love vanilla extract. And this just gives your cookies really nice flavor. However if you don't have it, you can leave it out. And then with your wooden spoon, just mix these eggs in. So now when you end up making these awesome cookies, I strongly suggest that you go over to my website, give it a star rating, and leave a comment because I would love to hear your feedback. Okay, this is looking good. Now we're gonna take our dry ingredients, just toss them in, and then mix it together until it forms a dough. One thing I love about this recipe is that you don't need any fancy equipment, you can mix it all up by hand. Okay so the star of the show here is the chocolate that you use. Now I like to use a bittersweet chocolate, so something around 72% cocoa solids. But what I do is I buy a bar of chocolate, I don't use chips, and as you can see I chop it up and you get really big chunks. What you want from the best ever chocolate chip cookie is good chocolate chip chunkage. So go ahead and just toss all of those in there. You'll notice in this recipe I am not shy with the chocolate. And then just fold it in with your wooden spoon. So now you guys have absolutely loved my best ever series. I've made brownies, I've also made best ever banana bread, if you haven't seen those make sure you check them out because if you like these cookies you're gonna love those. These cookies are going to be like half chocolate, half dough. There is a serious amount of chocolate in here. So now from here we're going to chill our dough, lots of times when people bake cookies they spread out, by chilling your dough you will actually get it to keep its shape. So we're gonna pop it into the fridge for an hour. So now I'm gonna let you in on a top baker's secret. There is a thing called aging the dough and lots of big bakeries and pastry chefs do it. They make their cookie dough maybe 3, 4, even 5 days in advance and then they bake it off. Over time it develops flavor and it also gives you a lovely texture to your cookie. So I recommend that you try it out, do not worry your cookie dough will not go bad. So now it's been an hour, my cookie dough has chilled, it's nice and firm so now we're gonna scoop it. Now you're gonna scoop 14 nice big cookies because that's what this dough makes. Now these are very generous sized cookies so if you want to make them a little bit smaller you can but I like nice big ones. Just so you know, you can freeze the dough at this stage and it freezes really well for up to 12 weeks, so you can take it out and bake off fresh cookies whenever you want them. So once you've scooped all your dough, I like to put it into my hand and just make it into a ball, that way it bakes nice and round. So now here's the important part, the baking. You want to bake these cookies off at 375°F or 190°C for 12 minutes only. That will give you a gooey center and a crispy outside. So I could not be happier with how these turned out, now come here to me because I want to show you what you're looking for when they're baked. Around the edge is a lovely golden brown, but then in the center, this is cookie gold, it is gooey, it is doughy, it is perfectly baked, just those 12 minutes give you a soft gooey center, so this is what we're looking for. So now the only way to enjoy these cookies is fresh out of the oven, when they're nice and warm and the chocolate is lovely and gooey. Just look at that. See how it's doughy in the middle and then crispy on the outside. I'm gonna be bold and say that this is the best ever chocolate chip cookie recipe but I want you to make it too find out for yourself. And if you enjoyed this video then please share it and I'll see you back here really soon for more Bigger Bolder Baking.