It’s nearly impossible to make chocolate chip cookies and not eat a little bit of the raw batter. It must be gravity that pulls your greedy fingers into that bowl. A quick scoop and bloop into your mouth later.... Yup. Definitely gravity at work there. NASA probably agrees. Delicious batter aside, these glorious chocolate chip cookies are studded with so many extraordinary elements.
I wanted to go for a variation of the classic Toll House recipe, so I added dried cherries and hazelnuts. The chocolate chips play well off the chewy sweetness of cherries and the crunch of the hazelnuts. You could opt for any dried fruit (like cranberries or raisins) or nuts (say walnuts or pecans). Whatever you have on hand will work. I also sprinkled kosher salt on top once the cookies were fresh out of the oven. Because flakes of salt and gooey chocolate chips are just meant to go together.
I crowd-tested them at a birthday party shortly after they came out of the oven and the results were an unanimous hit. I will definitely be making these again come cookie season aka the holidays.
Chocolate Chip Cookies With Cherries adapted from Dash & Bella
INGREDIENTS
2 cups and 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
1 ½ cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips
1 ½ cups hazelnuts finely chopped
1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup light or dark brown sugar, tightly packed
½ cup white sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp vanilla extract
Heat oven to 375° F and butter two large cookie sheets.
Sift flour, baking soda, and salt in a medium-sized bowl. Set aside. Mix together chocolate chips and chopped nuts. Set aside.
With a hand mixer (or standing mixer) on medium speed, cream the butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well mixed and light. Scrape down the sides. Add one egg and mix. Scrape down the sides, then add second egg. Continue mixing and then add vanilla.
Add the sifted flour mixture in 4 parts, slowly. For the first 3 batches, mix at low speed just to combine, scraping down the sides between each addition. Add the chocolate chip and nut mixture when you get to last batch of flour. Mix until there's barely a trace of flour visible. Mix by hand in the last batch to make sure you don’t overmix.
Form a 2 tablespoon-sized scoop and place each scoop onto cookie sheet with a couple inches in between. Bake one sheet at a time. They're done when brown and crispy on the outer border and raw in the very middle (8 to 10 minutes). Remove sheet pan. Allow to cool for a few minutes, then with a spatula, transfer cookies to a cookie rack to cool.