<font color="crimson">My suggestion would be to use only half the butter and the other half butter flavored crisco. That's what works for me. Also found some other suggestions on a site on the Internet. Including the same tip Sami had... see article below...</font>
In a column in April, I confessed to a culinary shortcoming - flat chocolate chip cookies - and my attempts to remedy this embarrassing problem.
Whoa. If you don't have the same problem, you have the answers. I never knew there were so many expert chipsters out there.
About 20 of you called, wrote or e-mailed to commiserate or to offer advice or a recipe. Even my daughters' pediatrician wrote to say that the same problem had "plagued our family forever." (He requested a batch of "perfect cookies" the next time my oldest gets a checkup.)
"I laughed until I cried when I read your column," wrote a reader who identified herself only by her AOL screen name. "It was the story of my life!" Her four sons loved her "collapsible" cookies, "but I never took them to bake sales, Cub Scout dinners or for school treats." She finally achieved success, she said, by following the recipe on the bag of Baker's brand chocolate chips and cutting the shortening in half.
Shortening was a common theme. Several readers suggested that using all butter causes the cookies to spread. To get around it, use a combination of butter and solid vegetable shortening or all vegetable shortening.
Other tips: Cut the baking time by 2 minutes. Use a baking stone. Add 2 tablespoons flour. Add 3/4 cup flour. Add 1/4 teaspoon of baking powder. Mix by hand. Cut the chocolate chips. Cool the cookies on brown paper. (The last few came from a mother of 11.)
I put six of your recipes to the test last week at home. Each was dutifully tasted and critiqued. All of the cookies were good; and not a one fell flat!
I started with a basic recipe that substituted a 50-50 butter-vegetable shortening combination for all butter. It produced a perfectly good cookie. Two other recipes used all solid vegetable shortening, one regular-flavor (Our Best Basic Chocolate Chip Cookies at
www.bhglive.com/food/) and one butter-flavor (Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies at
www.crisco.com). They were good, too.
Another called for baking soda, cream of tartar and salt - and fewer eggs and chocolate chips, proportionately. We concluded that it was more like a sugar cookie with some chocolate chips thrown in.
Two recipes stood apart. Surprisingly, both contain butter only. They also both call for more brown sugar than granulated, a flavor profile we decided we preferred.
One was a recipe developed by the test kitchen staff of Cook's Illustrated magazine, known for its meticulous experimentation to develop the "perfect" formula for various dishes. Reader Kay Poquette e-mailed to say she'd seen the recipe prepared on the affiliated PBS-TV show, "America's Test Kitchen." I found the recipe at the Web site.
Unlike any other cookie we tried, this one looked like gourmet cookie shop cookies, with a texture and taste of the same caliber.
Nancy Kunath called to dictate the other recipe. What makes this one different is the addition of a small box of instant vanilla pudding mix. This cookie respectably holds its shape during baking and just tastes really good.
Here are both recipes.
And if you think you have an even better one, I'll be happy to experiment some more. . . .
Nancy Kunath's Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup (2 sticks) margarine, room temperature
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
21/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 small package (3.4 ounces) instant vanilla pudding mix
1 package (12 ounces) chocolate chips
1 cup chopped nuts (we used pecans)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
In bowl, cream margarine and sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine flour, baking soda and pudding mix and stir into creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and nuts. Drop onto lightly greased baking sheets. Bake in preheated oven 15 minutes. Makes 5 to 6 dozen cookies.
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This recipe delivers on the promise in its title. These oversize cookies hold their shape and end up crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. It's really not as fussy as it sounds, and the baking goes quickly because the cookies are so big. This recipe and others can be found at
www.americastestkitchen.com.
America's Test Kitchen Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
2 cups plus 2 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 to 1 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower-middle positions and preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two large cookie sheets with parchment paper.
Whisk flour, baking soda and salt together in medium bowl; set aside.
Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Beat in egg, yolk and vanilla until combined. Add dry ingredients and beat at low speed just until combined. Stir in chips to taste. (We used 1 1/4 cups; 1 1/2 cups would be fine, too.)
Roll scant 1/4 cup dough (about 3 tablespoons) into ball. Holding dough ball in fingertips of both hands, pull into two equal halves. Rotate halves 90 degrees and, with jagged surfaces facing up, join halves together at their base, again forming a single ball, being careful not to smooth dough's uneven top surface. Place formed dough onto cookie sheet, leaving 21/2 inches between each ball.
Bake, reversing position of cookie sheets halfway through baking (from top to bottom and front to back), until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes. Cool cookies on sheets. When cooled, peel cookies from parchment. Makes 18 large cookies.
Chocolate Chip Cookies 
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