• 2 cups all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda*
• 1 teaspoon sea salt
• 1 cup salted butter (put this into mixer bowl and let sit until softened)
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• ¾ cup dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon water
• 1.5 teaspoons vanilla
• 2 large eggs
• 1.5 cups bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate chips**
• 1/2 bag Heath Bar bits

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Either grease two cookie sheets, or use Silpat mats on them. (I am a huge fan of the Silpat mat/sheet, so if you’re a big baker, I highly, highly recommend them. Don’t bother with cheaper versions – they don’t hold up.)

In medium-sized mixing bowl, stir together flour, baking soda, and salt.

In bowl of electric mixer (or in a large mixing bowl), cream together butter and sugars. Add the water and vanilla and mix until just combined. Add eggs and mix lightly. Stir in flour mixture. Fold in chocolate chips and Heath Bar bits. Do not over mix dough.

Drop cookies by heaping teaspoon 2 inches apart using 2 tablespoons or an ice cream scoop/melon baller (like this one: cookie scoop). THESE COOKIES SPREAD! You will want to go with two cookies per row, five rows per sheet, offset. No more than ten cookies will fit on a cookie sheet. (They spread slightly less if you’ve had a chance to refrigerate overnight.)

Bake for 12 minutes or until edges and centers are brown. Cool on sheet itself for at least 5 minutes before moving to rack to cool completely.

Yield: ~4 dozen

* Cooking may be an art, but baking is a science. Be sure your baking soda doesn’t get old or damp. If you keep one in the fridge open to soak up odors the way many people do, don’t use it for baking.

** Quality is key, here. Never, ever use Tollhouse chips. I have a big bin of chocolate chips/chunks/drops so what ends up in my cookies is usually a mix of bittersweet and semi-sweet, along with chunks… Semi-sweet is sweeter, but I prefer bittersweet which is richer and deeper.

• If you’re at the supermarket, go with Ghirardelli chips.
• If you ever get to Trader Joe’s, their brand of chips are excellent, too. I have a strong suspicion that they are just Ghirardelli packaged with TJ’s brand name.
• I order from King Arthur Flour with alarming regularity, and pretty much all their chips, chunks, etc, are worth tasting.