(How to Adult start up music)

Emily: One of the most important aspects of being an adult is remembering how to also have fun and to eat delicious foods, so today we're going to teach you how to bake some pretty basic chocolate chip cookies.

So, you're going to need some ingredients: 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1 teaspoon salt, 1 cup or two sticks of butter (that has been softened), 3/4 cup granulated sugar--

Emma: --But tell me Emily, pray tell: what is in this sugar?

Emily: It's vanilla bean! If you keep your vanilla bean in the sugar, your sugar tastes and smells like vanilla.

3/4 cups brown sugar, or, the kind of brown sugar I'm going to teach you how to make, in which case you will need granulated sugar and Black Strap molasses, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 2 large eggs, and 2 cups of Nestle Toll House (pronounced "Tollu") house semisweet chocolates. By the way, this is a Toll House cookie recipe.

So, we're gonna need cookie sheets, and make sure you have some sort of non-stick thing like parchment paper, measuring spoons, measure cups, a cookie scoop, a couple of bowls for mixing, a spatula...

So, oftentimes number 1 on the recipe for how to bake cookies is to preheat your oven, which doesn't make any sense, especially if you're going to freeze your dough for a little while before it goes in the oven, so I wait to preheat the oven until after the dough is made.

First thing you're going to do is you need 2-- (whoops)-- 2 1/4 cup of flour, and I'm gonna use a heaping quarter cup, because we're gonna need a little extra flour, cause we're going to use some molasses later. 

Emma: One teaspoon of baking powder--

Emily: One teaspoon salt, and then you need to mix these together. 

Emma: (stirring) doo doodoo doo

Emily: Alright.

Emma: So, butter in the bowl--

Emily: (adding 3/4 cup granulated sugar) Three...and then you can also use 3/4 cup of brown sugar but I like to make my own brown sugar, so I'm gonna teach you how to do that.

Emma: Three?

Emily: That's good.

Emma: Awesome.

Emily: So I usually add, like, two tablespoons of this stuff; I'm just gonna eyeball it--

Emma: Isn't it nice?

Emily: It's very nice. And this will serve as the brown sugar substitute.

Emma: This is the brown sugar.

Emily: Yeah. I did make an extra dish to clean, but it's worth it.

Emma: (adding vanilla) One teaspoon.

(Music! stirring montage.)

Emma: Oh we didn't include that love was an ingredient.

Emily: Oh yeah!

Add your eggs one at a time. You can crack them in a separate bowl so as to ensure that you don't get eggshell in the mix.

Emma: Ready?

Emily: One handed.

Emma: Ahh, professional!

Emily: This is like, the least photogenic...part of this whole thing.

So, now that we have incorporated all of the wet ingredients, we are going to add the dry ingredients, which we mixed at the beginning. Gradually.

Speed is not the objective here--

Emma: Okay.

Emily: --it's the--

Emily/Emma: --good incorporation.

Emily: Yeah.

Emma: Got it. Jinx.

Emily: Now that we have the wet and the dry ingredients incorporated, Mike is going to do the honors of adding all of the chocolate chips. 

Too, if you wanna add nuts, or M&Ms,

Emma: White chocolate chips? 

Emily: Yeah, white chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, coconut, pretty much anything you could put in there. I'd put in about--about half as many chocolate chips and then do, you know, half chocolate chips, half...whatever. The world is your oyster. Don't add oysters to your cookies.

Mike: That would be gross.

Emily: That would be disgusting.

So at this time, you have a massive ball of cookie dough. It's probably okay to go into the oven right now. It's also really great to freeze it if you wanna cut it in half and freeze part of it, or put it in the refrigerator for about an hour, cause then it gives everything time to incorporate a little bit better, and for the flavors to mix, and for the texture to become a little more solid so your cookies don't just become puddles in the oven.

(30 minutes later)

Now we're back! We're ready.

So this is the dough after it was in the freezer. We have a scoop that we're going to use to scoop it out. You can also just do this with spoons if you don't have a scoop.

They're going to spread out so you wanna give them, you know, space, you don't need to crowd your cookies. 

If you guys have any sea salt, you can put a little bit of sea salt on the top of your cookies, because it makes the rest of the flavors come out a little bit better. 

It suggests having them in there between 9 and 11 minutes, so most people settle for having them in for 10 minutes. If you're going to put them on different levels, I usually switch them at 5 minutes, because the top rack is going to cook a little slower.

We're ready! Here we go! Also it smells amazing.

Oh those look pretty good.

Then they need to cool, of course. They might not look picture perfect, or like what you would have on the cover Martha Stewart Magazine, or whatever, but they smell amazing.

Emma: Are we ready?

Emily: Cookies omigosh.

(happy eating noises.)

Emma: Mm. Oh my god. That's really good.

That's all we've got for you today. If you have any cookie or baking tips or tricks please leave them for us in the comments section below, thanks to Emily for being here today--

Emily: Thank you.

Emma: And for being awesome! And in the meantime, do you have any thoughts about a catchphrase, Emily?

Emily: Back atcha.

Emma: (laughs)

Emily: (laughing) That's all I've got today. Passing the torch to somebody else for this one.

Emma: Right.

(How to Adult credits.)