.incredible chocolate chip cookies.

when you get into baking with a sense of urgency and fury like i have, you inherit a great desire to make everything you can get your whisk and spatula on. from pies to cakes to pops to cookies, i've aimed to conquer them all. some recipes have been great successes while others have been just pretty good.

most of the time, i look for something unique to make with the comforting qualities that ingredients like chocolate, vanilla or lemon bring to us. the week i was slated to start teaching my new batch of students, we were due for some family company. dustin's cousin has a child that is a st. jude patient here in memphis.

when their family travels to the city for his appointments, they sometimes have a couple out of the five of them stay with us. knowing that they'd be our guests, i hoped baking a treat for the three boys would add a little sweetness to their trip. when baking for little boys, somehow a souffle or a crumble, a fancy tart or a big layered cake somehow didn't seem to be a good fit.

what do all little boys like? chocolate chip cookies. they're traditional. they're classic. they're delicious.

with so many variations of this widely-used recipe in existence, i went to my go-to-gal's site for her take on this cookie. thanks to the pioneer woman, i discovered a recipe that took your basic chocolate chip cookie recipe and made it really, really good.

luckily, the recipe made dozens and dozens of cookies. it made so many that i was able to bring a little smile to the first day of school as well. individually bagging a cookie with a little happy note, i tucked them in to my teacher friends' mailboxes very early on that first monday morning.

i hope that the cookie brought a bright a smile to the their first day because giving the cookies brought one to mine.

chocolate chip cookies 
adapted from the pioneer woman   
ingredients 
1/2 cup Margarine (i used 1 cup of butter and no margarine)
1/2 cup Butter, Softened 
1 cup Firmly Packed Brown Sugar 
1/2 cup White Sugar 
2 whole Eggs 
2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract 
2-1/4 cups Plus 2 Tablespoons, All-purpose Flour 
1 teaspoon (heaping) Instant Coffee Granules 
1 teaspoon Baking Soda 
1-1/2 teaspoon Salt 
2 Tablespoons Flax Seed, Slightly Crushed With Rolling Pin (i skipped this ingredient)
3/4 cups Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips 
1 cup (heaping) Milk Chocolate Chips 
directions 
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a bowl, stir together butter, margarine, brown sugar, and white sugar until combined. Add eggs and vanilla and stir together. 
In a separate bowl, stir together flour, instant coffee, baking soda, and salt. Add to wet ingredients in batches, stirring gently after each addition. Stir in flax seed if desired. Stir in chocolate chips. 
Drop balls of dough on a cookie sheet and bake for 11 to 13 minutes. Remove from cookie sheet and eat warm.