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I hacked the holy shit out of my thumb a month ago with a mandolin. To help me regain my kitchen confidence, and I am sure hoping it would help him get laid, my husband bought me a KitchenAid Artisan 5 quart stand mixer for Valentine’s Day.

I swooned.

Of course, I had to try it out with my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe.

The recipe is:

1 1/2 cups of flour (the foundation of baking)

1/2 tsp baking soda (the riser)

1/2 tsp salt (for flavor enhancement)

1 stick of softened buttah (not margarine or any crappy substitute. Real artery-clogging, Paula-Deen-loving BUTTAH)

1/2 cup brown sugar (how come you taste so good?)

1/4 sugar (the Caucasian variety, granulated, not powdered)

1 egg

3/4 cups chocolate chips

The buttah needs to be soft. If it must be microwaved, just nuke it a little. Hot buttah could end up cooking the egg when its added and that is a good thing at breakfast, but so not a good thing in cookies. Put the sugars and the soft, room temp buttah in the spiffy new mixer and whip them into a cream.

Now pour in the egg and BEAT IT.

Add the soda and salt to the flour, give it a wicked good stir and pour it into the spiffy new fabulous mixer. It even comes with a fantastic removable spout guide that helps you stuff while the beater is in motion. This helps prevent the flour from flying back at the pourer. I didn’t use it here. I just poured the dry ingredient in very slowly.

Once the dough is mixed, fold in the chips by hand because they are sensitive and may be traumatized in the mixer. I use a teaspoon to dole out the cookies and I get about three dozen out of this recipe. I always use AirBake aerated cookie sheets. The are a layered sheet that allows air to pass under the cookies and it keeps them from getting burned on the bottom. They cost a few more dollars than a regular cookie sheet, but seriously, they sheets are worth the investment.

Now, the official recipe says to leave them in the oven for 10 t0 12 minutes. I say pshaw. That is far too long. I like my cookies soft, so I pull them at no more than eight minutes,  often at the seven minute make, just when the very edges are barely brown. They still look like they are mostly dough but that’s OK. They will firm up as they cool, but they will be perfectly moist and soft.

This is what they looked like minutes before we poured a glass of milk and devoured them.