There aren’t many things that I’ve made more of than homemade chocolate chip cookies. We made them a lot with my mom growing up. I make them every month or so and we always make about 6 batches right before Christmas to have on hand for Christmas parties.
I’ve always used the recipe on the chocolate chip bag until we recently began producing lard on the farm from our pigs. Lard is fatback rendered down and strained so it’s pure fat. It’s amazing for cooking and baking! You can also get lard made with the fat around the kidney, called leaf fat. This is more flavor neutral and what I prefer for baking sweet things. You can read about the benefits of lard and how we use it in our kitchen here.
I’ve tried a few recipes where lard was the only fat I used in the cookies, but my absolute favorite is a mixture of both lard and butter. The lard adds moistness and chewiness while the butter adds that richness I love in a cookie.
Usually I make cookies while Daisy is napping and Mason is always a wonderful helper!
Farmhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies
*Makes roughly 45-50 cookies*
Ingredients:
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup white sugar
2/3 cup softened room temperature butter
3/4 cup softened room temperature leaf lard
2 room temperature fresh eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 & 3/4 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
12 oz. bag chocolate chips
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 365 degrees and set out 3 cookie sheets. Make sure oven racks are in the top third and bottom third, both evenly spaced from the top and bottom of oven.
In a large mixing bowl, cream sugars, butter and lard together until light and fluffy with slotted wooden spoon. Add eggs & vanilla to the bowl. Beat eggs a bit and then mix all together.
Add dry ingredients except chocolate chips on top. Using a fork, gently mix dry ingredients until baking soda and salt are well incorporated and then use your mixing spoon to gently mix all together.
Fold in chocolate chips. Drop by the large rounded tablespoon onto the cookie sheet at least 1-2 inches apart.
Place the first cookie sheet on the bottom rack and bake for 4-5 minutes.
Move first cookie sheet to top rack and next cookie sheet to the bottom rack and bake another 4-5 minutes or until edges of cookies are slightly brown and tops are no longer shiny.
Remove first cookie sheet and let cool for 3 minutes before removing cookies onto a cooling rack or kitchen towel.
Continue until all cookies are baked: 4-5 minutes on the bottom rack and 4-5 minutes on the top rack for a total of 8-10 total minutes baking time.
Enjoy with friends and family!
Tip from the farm: We keep out what we will eat in the next couple days and freeze the rest. They thaw super quickly so you can enjoy homemade chocolate chip cookies anytime you’d like!
Let us know if you give this recipe a try and how you enjoy the cookies!