Friday I woke up and decided I felt like baking. I know, I know. What a surprise. I was planning to get lunch with a friend who I haven’t seen in a while, so I thought it would be nice to make cookies and give her some. I’ve learned that if I want to keep baking the way I have been, it’s best to give the treats away. That way, they’re not in the house very long and tempting me to eat them all!

Naturally, I decided on the most common and most popular cookie there is: chocolate chip. And naturally, I knew it would be the recipe from Bobbie Lord’s Magnolia Bakery Handbook. Thanks to my well-stocked pantry with baking supplies, I only needed to run to the store to get some chocolate chips.

When I returned home, I began making the dough. When it came time to roll the dough into balls that would become cookies, I was excited to see the recipe actually yielded about 50% more than the recipe said it would make. I guess I made my dough balls a little smaller than Bobbie Lord does. But I didn’t care one bit. More cookies!

This recipe calls for a pretty long and varied chill time. She says it can be either 30 minutes or up to 24 hours! Well, since I needed these cookies that afternoon, I chose to chill the cookie dough balls for around 90 minutes. This way I had a pocket of time to go for a walk, shower, and preheat the oven.

After the chill time, I began baking the cookies. I started out with the beginning of the bake time which was 10 minutes. They didn’t look done to me, so I continued to add one more minute until I got to 13 minutes. By then, they were lightly browned, but didn’t seem to be as crisp as the cookies in the picture in the cookbook.

I continued baking the cookies with their longer bake time and eventually I tried one. They were perfect! Probably one of the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made! And my friend? She liked them, too!

Because these cookies are so light, they didn’t really photograph well. This was especially true in the natural morning light that hits my kitchen. I showed the pictures I took to my coworker and she called them “ghost cookies,” which made me chuckle.

Well anyway…here are the pics!