I won't lie. I think I've probably baked every chocolate chip cookie recipe claiming to be the "best." As a teenager I think I made the classic Nestle Tollhouse recipe so often I had it memorized for many years. Sadly as an adult you begin to realize the chocolate chip/dough ratio is so poor no matter how many chocolate chips you add in. More recently my go-to was the NY Times recipe which uses cake flour and bread flour rather than all-purpose flour. But it has a wait time which is often really hard to abide by when it comes to baking. Eating the dough is rather tempting when it's just sitting there for an extended period of time. Then I moved on to a sea salt chocolate chip recipe I adapted from somewhere else, and made it so much people grew tired of it.

There's one thing that's very important to me when it comes to cooking & baking: music. I always have it playing. It's really helpful for tuning out distractions and keeping me focused. What makes this playlist different from a regular Christmas playlist is the types of songs. For baking or cooking I like playing more jazz or standards that don't really distract and just fill the room with sound (and set the mood). It's a win-win because if there are guests around, they will be content and happy. So it basically fits both baking and entertaining. I've made a few of these over the years. I think 2012's was the most popular of the bunch, but it was also the first.