Step 1

Preheat the oven to 375°. Spray the cookie sheet with nonstick spray or you can use a liner. Silicone liners (like silpats) and parchment paper both work very well.

Step 2

Mix together the two sugars. Be sure to break apart any hard chunks of brown sugar and get the two sugars fully mixed. We prefer dark brown sugar because we think it has a deeper, more caramel flavor, but light brown sugar will make your cookies taste a bit sweeter.

Step 3

Mix the softened butter into the sugar in globs. This helps really incorporate the butter and the sugar.

Step 4

Mix in the eggs one at a time. Crack the eggs directly into the bowl with the butter-sugar mix, and then use your spoon to lightly beat the eggs before stirring them into the butter and sugar.

Step 5

Measure and mix in the vanilla, salt, and baking soda. Mix the batter as much as possible right now. Break apart any remaining clumps and make sure the batter is a consistent color throughout.If you prefer, you can mix the salt and baking soda with the flour in a separate bowl instead of adding them now. This ensures that these dry ingredients are evenly distributed throughout the batter, but we've never had any trouble adding them in at this point. Honestly, we just prefer to save ourselves an extra bowl to wash!

Step 6

Add the flour all at once. At this point, you want to mix the batter as little as possible to avoid forming too much gluten. Stop mixing as soon as there is no more visible flour on the dough or in the bottom of the bowl.

Step 7

Add the chocolate chips all at once and use a folding motion to incorporate them into the batter.

Step 8

Scoop the batter onto your baking sheet, spacing the balls of dough roughly 2 inches apart. We use a tablespoon and measure out slightly rounded balls - they're about the size of pingpong balls. You can certainly go larger or smaller as you prefer!

Step 9

Bake the cookies for 9-11 minutes. Take them out when they look puffy, are set around the edges, and dry to the touch. Let them cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet. As they cool, they will collapse back on themselves.

Step 10

Transfer the cookies to a rack to finish cooling completely. Bake the rest of the cookies in batches.