I've been told on more than one occasion (so often, in fact, that I do feel justified in tooting my own horn about it) that I make exceptionally good chocolate chip cookies. And I've been making chocolate chip cookies regularly since I was about 14 years old, so I've had a long time to hone them. I do bake other types of cookies once in a while, but chocolate chip cookies are my first and enduring love when it comes to baking. So simple and so good. All those years of baking cookies have resulted in cookies that turn out puffy, yet not too cakey - soft in the middle, and crisp on the edges.

Since I simply use the recipe on the Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip package, the secret seems to be in my methods. If you're interested in learning more about my cookie voodoo, read on. Otherwise, just enjoy gazing at some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies.

1) Use chilled butter straight from the fridge. The softer the butter is, the flatter the cookie is going to turn out. This means no leaving the butter out to soften and definitely no microwaving it. I used to do this even when I didn't have a suitable mixer (which was actually up until I got married two years ago and my mother-in-law bought me the lovely red Kitchen Aid stand mixer). Nowadays I use the Kitchen Aid with the paddle attachment. This site warns, however, that if you're going to use a stand mixer to not get carried away with creaming the butter or you'll overdo it.

I use organic salted butter because that's what I have around anyway, however I know this works better with non-organic butter. In my experience, organic butter has a lower melting point than non-organic. As for salted or unsalted, recipes always call for unsalted but I actually prefer the taste of salted butter in chocolate chip cookies because I feel like the slightly saltier flavor is a good counterpoint to the chocolate chips.

2) Put the dough in the refrigerator when you're not using it, e.g., between batches. This also includes not dropping dough onto cookie sheets before they're ready to go in the oven. If you're waiting for another batch to cook, just sit tight and wait until they're out of the oven. It'll take longer, but the cookies will turn out better.

3) Don't drop cookie dough onto a hot cookie sheet. If you need to re-use cookie sheets, either wait for them to cool off or, if you want to hurry the process, wash them in cold water, then dry them and you can use them again. You don't want the dough to start melting unevenly on the bottom before they're even in the oven. This seems like an overly detail-oriented step, but it's really worth it if you don't want the cookies to flatten out.

4) Undercook them. Take them out of the oven when they're just brown on the edges and still whitish (but not quite shiny) in the middle. Like so:

Or even a little less cooked than that. Leave them on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes because if you try to remove them at this point, it'll be disaster - especially if you make bigger cookies like I tend to do.

5) If you have an uneven oven, like I do (stupid oven from 1983), set a timer and rotate them in the oven halfway through the baking. You may need to add a minute or so to the baking time just to compensate for the loss of heat. Better yet, don't have a crappy oven. It makes a difference; my cookies haven't turned out as good from this oven than anywhere else I've ever baked.

6) Some people say not to use insulated cookie sheets, but I think they work great. Get the lighter-colored ones so the cookies will not brown too much on the bottom. I use these.