Chocolate chip cookies with salted butter (American)

Chocolate chip cookies are a well-cherished American tradition ever since the 1930s when Ruth Wakefield accidentally invented them by putting regular chocolate chips in a cookie dough, thinking they would melt just the way baker's chocolate would. The chocolate chips didn't, however, melt during baking, but the recipe became a huge success, known as "Toll House cookie" or "Toll House chocolate crunch cookie", Toll House being the inn where Ruth cooked home-meals for customers during that time.
To this day, every Nestle bag of chocolate chip cookies sold in the USA today has a printed recipe of her cookies on the back :)
Traditionally, every chocolate chip cookie must contain both white sugar and brown sugar and backing-resistant semi-sweet chocolate chips. Most recipes (but not all) also include chopped nuts of all sorts, as we did here also. And another lovely variation is using salted butter to create an over-the-roof pleasant contrast. 

As a personal history note, I should say that I intended to make this on the 7th of February 2012, in the evening. I even fried and chopped the nuts, preparing them for the cookies. As I was feeling tired, I postponed to the next day. But sometime during the night, our little girl Mira, still residing in me, decided she wanted to see the world, therefore the cookies had to wait... and wait for another 2-3 weeks or so until I recovered and we both grew accustomed to each other enough to create a routine that allowed me a bit of spare time. When I found the time and the energy to bake them, I just got the nuts from a jar in which my mother had put them (to save for my later use) and in which they stayed as a reminder the whole time since before the birth. :). I will always associate these cookies with those crazy tired-worried-incredibly joyful roller-coaster weeks :)
Recipe adapted from David Lebovitz, via Crazy Mother Cooker.

Last year: Irish soda bread buns with mixed seeds.


Ingredients:

• 180 g flour
• 100 g walnuts and hazelnuts
• 200 g chocolate chips (we used Dr Oetker)
• 100 g white sugar
• 110 g brown sugar
• 115 g salted butter (we used Lurpak)
• 1 egg (at room temperature)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/3 teaspoon of your best and fanciest salt (optional, if you think you'll enjoy extra salty)

To get started, dry-fry the nuts for about 10 minutes, stirring often so they don't burn. Chop them afterwards. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.

Put the butter, vanilla and both sugars in a large bowl:

Mix very well with a fork until even. Also add the egg and mix until even.

Mix the flour with the baking powder (and salt, if using) and gradually incorporate it in the butter cream. Pour the chopped nuts and chocolate chips on top:

Mix well and the composition is done. Line a baking sheet with baking paper and drop spoonfuls of cookie dough on it, gently pressing them with the back of the spoon. Leave some space between them as they'll spread during baking:

Bake in the preheated oven for 10 minutes, then gently press them down with a spoon so they'll be more flat (and thus more chewy and consistent) and return to the oven for another 3-4 minutes.
Take out of the oven and allow to cool for 15-20 minutes and try to deal with the delicious smell. After thy're cooled, transfer to a serving platter and dig in! :)