The very best chocolate chip cookies in ever

Ah, the noble chocolate chip cookie. Legendary, simple, a sweet and easy favorite of all. I like mine with big chunks of good quality chocolate (save the dainty "mini" nonsense for, I don't know, eating out of hand, or melting to make big pieces of chocolate), messily soft in the middle and crunchy on the edges. The perfect chocolate chip cookie will stay this way even the next day. Pish posh to the Chips Ahoy! If I wanted a dry, crumbly amalgam of refined sugar and chocolatey product ("Now with more brown extract!") I'd dip a fistful of raw flour in some Yoo-Hoo.

I've inspected several recipes, pored over endless tomes in my search. The best general recipe I have been working with I will post here, with a solid second recipe being over at Lovintheoven, an awesome blog that I found from Tastespotting.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 Cups Flour

1/2 Teaspoon Baking Soda

1/4 Teaspoon Salt

1 cup DARK Brown Sugar (dark is key!)

1/2 cup white sugar (slightly less is ok if you're using more chocolate!)

3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 egg

1 yolk

1 tablespoon good vanilla extract, OR one bean scraped out if you can get it (fancy!) and a teaspoon of extract

1 and 1/2 cups chocolate chunks

1 cup walnuts (Be liberal with the mix ins; I don't usually measure, I just dump until deliciousness is achieved. This is a good starting ratio.)

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
2. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda. The "dump in a bowl and toss with a fork" method usually suffices in a pinch. Sieve or proper sifter is best.
3. Butter and sugars get whipped together in a separate bowl until well incorporated and creamy. This is best accomplished with a stand or hand mixer.
4. Beat the eggs and vanilla into the butter and sugar until the mixture is lighter in color and texture.
5. Fold in the sifted ingredients with a rubber spatula. At first, it will look like there is not enough of the wet ingredients to sop up all the flour, but keep at it with a gentle hand and it will come together. When all incorporated, stir in the chips and nuts.
6. Deposit dough by rounded tablespoons on your silpat or parchment lined cookie sheet, and bake 8-11 minutes. Depending on the size of your rounded spoonful, it could take a little more or less. Keep an eye on the first batch. When they are brown and crispy looking on the edges, they're perfect. When you smell caramelized cookie, it's already too late :(
7. Let your beauties cool on the pan for a few minutes before transferring them to a wire rack or a flat, cool pan to relax for a bit.

Hooray! I hope this recipe works out as well for you as for me. Also especially wonderful with macadamias and white chocolate chips ...