amazing chocolate chip cookies

I made some chocolate chip cookies before I left Halifax.  Not for Paddy--these are filled with butter and eggs--but for friends going through a hard time.  They are so good, the best medicine I hope.  This is a special request recipe for Kevin, because he says my recipes are too complicated looking.  But really, they are for Katie and Dan, because I am too far away right now and can't bring them over myself.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

based on Carla Rollins' recipe from Gourmet October 2003

Makes 3 dozen cookies

Takes 2 hours (for all the baking and cooling)

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, room temperature

1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

3 large eggs

1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

2 1/2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (16 ounces)

1/2 c. lightly toasted hazelnuts (or walnuts, or pecans - and really you don't have to toast them), roughly crushed

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F

Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Stir together flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a small bowl.

Beat together butter and sugars in a large bowl with an electric mixer at high speed until pale and fluffy, 2 to 3 minutes. Lightly beat 1 egg with a fork in a small bowl and add 1 3/4 tablespoons of it plus 2 remaining whole eggs.  Beat in vanilla.

Stir in flour mixture until just blended, then stir in chips and nuts.

Evenly scoop big spoons of dough onto 2 baking sheets, 8 cookies per sheet.

Bake, 1 sheet at a time, until golden, 12 or 13 minutes. Transfer cookies to a rack to cool and keep making cookies.

NB: I turn my oven to 325 degrees fahrenheit because my oven is very hot.  if yours seems to work for other recipes at the prescribed temperature, then bake these at 350.  Also, my oven is hotter on one side than it is on the other.  I turn my cookies around 6 minutes through the recipe.  The cookies will look a little puffy and undercooked when you take them out.  Fear not!  They will fall and be perfectly done.  This recipe produces a cookie that is firm on the outside, but moist and dense inside.  Not in any way cake-like, not crispy, but the perfect cookie consistency.