By Ellen Cawood

Kitchen Corner

This year I have been bringing you so many recipes that can help you transition to a healthier lifestyle. Well, there are all kinds of aspects to health—physical health, mental health, spiritual health, emotional health, etc. The recipe I’m sharing this week may not be the best for the physic, but it’s sure to feed your soul!

Here’s how the recipe came about…So the other day I was so stressed out about school and work. I told Jake that I have got to do something that makes me happy, brings me joy and gets my mind off my to do list. I hadn’t made homemade chocolate chip cookies in so long because I kept messing them up each time I would make them.

I don’t know what I kept doing wrong, but I decided to retire my cookie efforts until last week when I set out on a mission to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. And what a successful mission it was. I’m telling you, this is one of my favorite recipes I’ve shared to date because it brought me so much joy, and Jake was pretty happy about it too.

The World’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients: 1 cup unsalted butter, 3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour, 1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 2 cups brown sugar, ½ a cup of granulated sugar, 2 eggs, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, 2 bittersweet chocolate bars, 1 cup of chopped pecans

Instructions: Begin by chopping your chocolate bars into small chunks and set aside. Make sure to leave some larger chunks that you will use at the very end. Melt butter over medium heat in a small saucepan. In a mixing bowl, whisk together your dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt—set aside. Pour the melted butter into the bowl of a stand mixer, or into a bowl that you can use a hand mixer to combine. Whisk your sugars in with the butter. Add eggs one at a time and mix to combine after each. Stir in vanilla. Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture one cup at a time, mixing slowly between each addition. Once combined, add your chopped chocolate and pecans (if you choose) to the dough. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and allow it to rest in the fridge for 30 minutes.

While dough is resting, preheat the oven to 365 degrees. Remove dough from fridge. Use an ice cream scoop to form cookie balls and bake 10-12 minutes. Remove the cookies once they are golden. Let them cool on a rack for 10 minutes and enjoy!