Gathering the Ingredients...

After picking the recipe for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie, it was time to get the ingredients together. Originally, I thought that I had a lot of the ingredients that I would need to for the recipe I had chosen already in my pantry. However, I soon discovered that I did not have anything but the very basics like eggs, sugar, and salt.
It was a cold and rainy Sunday and I thought it would be the ideal day to stay inside and bake.

So, recipe in hand, I headed to the store. Since I was also picking up other groceries as well, I didn’t realize that I had left the recipe in the car until I was all the way in the back of Wal-Mart and I could hear the rain pounding on the metal roof above me. I was ready to just forget baking for the day…as good of an excuse as any…until I had the bright idea to check out the recipe on the back of a bag of chocolate chips. How different could it be from the one that I had chosen? Apparently very!

After returning from the store, I unloaded all of my ingredients on the counter so that I could check my recipe to make sure I got everything I needed. Though I had all of the ingredients, per say, I began to realize that getting the ingredients for a cookie recipe is not as black and white as I had originally thought.

Below, I will try to decode the recipe that I have chosen in an attempt to spare people from the ingredient confusion I experienced:

Unsalted Butter:

Most butter is salted so you have to look for the package that specifically says “unsalted.” If, by chance, you can’t find it or forget it (hey, it happens), you can use regular butter but omit or use less of the salt that the recipe also calls for.

Dark Brown Sugar:

This one is a little more negotiable. Light brown sugar should be fine.

Sugar:

No biggie here.

Eggs:

Pretty straight forward.

Pure Vanilla Extract:

There are two types of vanilla extract, “pure” and “imitation.” Most serious bakers will advocate for the use of pure extract, however, the imitation kind will work, too.

Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips or Chunks:

This is really more of a preference, I think. If you like your cookies a little less sweet, stick with the semi-sweet. If not, I would suggest the regular (sweet) ones.

All-Purpose Flour:

This is VERY important. Most people have “self-rising” flour in their pantry because it is what most recipes call for. However, it is NOT the same as “all-purpose.” Self-rising flour has an added ingredient that causes things to rise which is not what you want your cookies to do.

Baking Soda:

Not “powder.” You're looking for the stuff in the yellow box that your mom kept in the fridge to keep it smelling fresh.

Salt:

The stuff in the shaker is fine.