A woman that lived across the street from me in my old neighborhood in Roslindale when I was a kid used to make chocolate chip cookies for me and her husband almost on the daily. Mostly they were for her husband but I knew she made them everyday so I always made time to see them. You know.

I’ve never actually made them. Ever. I don’t know why; I’m completely open to making them, it’s just the way it worked out. I’ve decided to tackle chocolate chip cookie making head on and have sought the googled council of one of the most present, successful and trustworhy chocolatiers, Jacques Torres. Or Mr. Chocolate. What savvy branding that is. My aunt and I took a trip to New York a couple of years ago and we stopped at his little boutique, which is nice.

This is his infamous chocolate chip cookie recipe. Behold:

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1 2/3 cups bread flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar, packed
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 1/3 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content

sea salt for sprinkling

My stomach churns when I think about how much butter I had to put in this recipe. 2 1/2 sticks.

Here’s the thing. People who bake often have mechanically powered tools. I have a whisk. I couldn’t whisk the granulated sugar, brown sugar and butter. I attempted it but all the butter collected into the whisk. So I used my hands, which worked out well. Also it exfoliated my hands.

That’s nice.

2 eggs, remember, and vanilla extract. I used my hands for this too…

Now this is all the powdered stuff, cake flour, bread flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt. I used a whisk for this. Because I COULD. Back to this:

I had to combine the dry stuff with the wet stuff. This was the worst part. I tried to use the whisk but that really didn’t work out because…

The result is a dough so sticky, I had to use a fork to scrape it off my hands. We made plaster masks in art class when I was a fifth grader. This dough felt like plaster. The ripples you see in the photo below are actually from the fork…

Chocolate time! The recipe actually calls for “bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content”, which Shaw’s didn’t have, so I used Nestle semisweet chips and Bakers unsweetened choco-cubes that I chopped up with a massive knife. Should be fine. Unless doves cry every time Mr. Chocolates recipe isn’t honored.

Don’t cry.

There it is.

The catch is, this magic dough needs to sit for anywhere between 24 and 72 hours. Which I think is an absurd amount of time to wait for cookies. But actually, it’s genius. Mr. Chocolate wants us to do this so they may be doused in holy anticipation, feeding our building, burning desire for consumption. That clever, clever fox.

I’m making these tomorrow. I’ll let the world know if these are, in fact, the best chocolate chip cookies ever then! Unless I messed up, which I may have when I was measuring the baking powder and baking soda. I used the half teaspoon spoon in place of the whole teaspoon spoon(at least I think I did), accidentally, so I threw in an extra half teaspoon of each to even things out.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.