Barbara Bush's Favorite Cookie Recipe

This recipe surfaced from the Bush family kitchen during the early 1990s and has the hallmarks of a real homemaker’s formula: small batch, no fuss, and one curious twist that sets it apart from the standard Toll House.

The quirk is the hot water. A teaspoon and a half goes in with the vanilla after the butter, brown and white sugars, and egg have been creamed for a full three minutes. That splash of warm liquid loosens the dough just enough to spread evenly in the oven, giving you cookies with crisp lacy edges and soft, chewy centers instead of the squat domes you get from a stiffer dough.

Using equal parts brown and white sugar is the other quiet detail. The brown sugar provides moisture and chewiness, the white sugar gives crispness and spread. Together they hit the middle ground most chocolate chip cookie fans actually want.

Dropping the dough by well-rounded teaspoons makes a smaller cookie than most modern recipes call for. Each one bakes through in about ten minutes flat, with a quick one-minute rest on the hot sheet to set the bottoms before transferring to a rack.

Pro Tips

• Cream the butter and sugars the full three minutes. Shortcutting the creaming gives a denser, less tender cookie.
• Use truly hot water, not warm. The temperature matters for how the dough hydrates and spreads.
• Watch the bottoms more than the tops. Pull the cookies when the edges are golden but the centers still look slightly underdone; carryover cooking finishes them on the sheet.
• Use semi-sweet chocolate chips, not milk. The mild sweetness of milk chocolate gets lost against the brown sugar.

Variations

• Swap half the chocolate chips for chopped toasted pecans for a Southern-style cookie.
• Add a quarter teaspoon of cinnamon to the dry ingredients for a warm, almost snickerdoodle backbone.
• Use bittersweet chocolate chunks instead of chips for bigger pockets of melted chocolate in each cookie.