While many Uni students love to bake, it's clear that not all recipes are exactly suited to the culinary skills (or lack thereof) of most high schoolers. So, Gargoyle reporter Nikita Dutta and Class of 2011 alum Eleni Yannelis have taken the liberty of testing a recipe beforehand and working out the kinks to give you the inside scoop on how to succeed in your baking endeavor. This time around, they've chosen Gwyneth Paltrow's take on chocolate chip cookies.

CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE RECIPE:

Mixing the butter and sugar. Gargoyle photo by Nikita Dutta (click to enlarge)

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Adapted from GOOP by Gwyneth Paltrow's recipe for Tate's Chocolate Chip Cookies.

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
  Check below to find out why we actually used it this time around!
• 1 cup butter
• 3/4 cup granulated sugar
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon water
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
  We didn't really make the cut here, however, which sort of called into question our calling them "chocolate chip" cookies.

PROCEDURE:

The dough was a little chunky before we stirred the wet and dry ingredients together completely. Gargoyle photo by Nikita Dutta (click to enlarge)

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1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

2. In a medium-sized bowl, stir together the flour, soda, and salt. And, yes, we did indeed use salt in this recipe, despite the fact that we never have in the past. This bizarre deviance in our behavior is explained in more detail below.

3. In a separate bowl, combine the butter and sugar. We zapped our butter in the microwave briefly to make it soft enough to mix. Then, stir in the eggs, vanilla extract, and water.

4. Slowly add your mixture of dry ingredients to the second bowl, and then add the chocolate chips.

5. Form the dough into small balls and place them on a lined cookie tray. Space them fairly generously because they will spread out quite a bit in the oven.

6. Bake for around eight minutes, or until they start to turn slightly golden.

THE INSIDE SCOOP:

We admit it—maybe chocolate chip cookies aren't exactly on the same difficulty level as the desserts we normally choose for this section. Maybe.

But, still, who doesn't love these classic treats? We happen to adore them, and, on top of that, Eleni was simply dying to try something out of Gwyneth Paltrow's cookbook, for reasons Nikita still struggles to understand. So, all in all, it seemed like we really couldn't go wrong with this recipe. And we didn't; the cookies were delicious.

The finished cookie dough. Gargoyle photo by Nikita Dutta (click to enlarge)

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Apart from a few rather uncommon ingredients (Nikita can't remember the last time she put water in cookie dough), the recipe itself was straightforward and easy to follow. We even used the salt this time around because, according to Eleni, if Gwyneth Paltrow uses salt, we must also use salt. Don't ask Nikita why this is the case because she certainly doesn't know, but apparently it's the truth.

Make a mental note of it for next time you bake: If Gwyneth Paltrow uses salt, you must also use salt!

However, that mantra evidently does not apply to ingredients across the board because we realized at the last minute that we didn't have enough chocolate chips and, not wanting to run to the grocery store all over again, ended up using probably half the amount that Gwyneth Paltrow used. Please don't tell her; we promise we won't do such a preposterous thing again!

At any rate, it was therefore not surprising that our cookies came out lacking significantly in the chocolate chip department. However, they got high marks in all other areas, from sweetness, to texture, to general aesthetics.

One word about the cook time, though: Watch it carefully because it depends entirely on your taste. This particular recipe says to bake the cookies for eight minutes, but the recipe that it itself was based on says twelve minutes. We, on the other hand, left them in the oven for even less than eight minutes—just over six, really.

None of these cook times are more right than the other; it just depends on what kind of texture you're going for. This recipe makes almost strangely thin cookies, so if you bake them for a full twelve minutes, they become nice and crispy. If you leave them in for less time, however, you will end up with a much softer texture. The cookies will still be thin, mind, but soft and chewy nonetheless.

In general, we'd highly recommend this recipe. Sure, they're plain old chocolate chip cookies, but not every occasion calls for something fancy; there are days when you just can't beat classic chocolate chip. We can say for sure that the next time such a day arises, we'll be reaching for none other than this recipe.

The finished cookies were delicious, even if we had to omit some chocolate chips. Gargoyle photo by Nikita Dutta (click to enlarge)