Cookies, preferably eaten after being baked

Why is it so hard to transfer a batch of cookies to the oven intact, without any raw dough going amiss? It is just fact of baking science that makes it impossible to not leave a lot of dough in the bowl on purpose. 

I have searched for the perfect recipe, that is vanilla-ish and chewy with good sized chunks of dark chocolate, fruit and nuts.  Kind of like those cookies in the paper bags in the supermarkets, just without all of the fats and nastiness.  After a lot of searching I have learnt this:

 1.  American recipes that produce American style chewy cookies use vegetable shortening and hydrogenated fats. I do not like to use these in baking but recipes from the good and great of cookie making like David Lebovitz insist chilling the dough is a secret to success. Some recipes call for up to 24 hours of chilling.
2. If the recipe uses baking powder the cookie will have a cakey texture, for chewy, American style texture use bicarb or a combination of both.

3. Brown sugar is used in this recipe for its richer flavor and dark colour. It retains moisture better than caster sugar, to keep the cookies chewy and dense.

4. The cookies should be removed from the oven barely cooked. Keep checking, as soon as the edges are remotely golden and firm take your batch from the oven. They will firm up far more than seems possible. These produce the chewy American style cookie, leave them in oven longer will produce and hard, crumbly biscuit-esc delight.

The recipe is from Eric Lanlard’s ‘Home Bake’

• Make the cookies roughly the same size, this makes them uniform in texture and colour once baked.
•  If freezing the dough, put the dough into a Tupperware and defrost totally before use. Once frozen, the chocolate chunks in the dough melt more in the oven than if the dough is just chilled, so there is less contrasting textures of the chewy dough and hard chocolate.  

Makes about 20

175g unsalted butter, melted,plus extra for greasing

250g plain flour

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

½ tsp salt

200g soft dark brown sugar

100g caster sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 egg

1gg yolk

300g chocolate, chopped into chunks 

1.  Preheat the oven to 170oc/325F/gas mark 3. Grease two trays with butter and line with baking paper
2. Sift the flour, bicarbonate of soda and salt into a large bowl. Set aside.
3.  Cream the melted butter, brown sugar and caster sugar together in a medium bowl, using an electric hand whisk until well blended. This will not end up light and fluffy like usual cake mixtures,  when you add the egg it will start to transform to a lighter mixture
4.  Beat in the vanilla, egg and egg yolk until light and creamy
5.  Add the sifted ingredients and mix until just blended, stir in the chocolate by hand using a wooden spoon
6.  Drop the dough on to the prepared baking trays, a teaspoon size of dough will produce a good sized cookie but each cookie could be up to two table spoons of dough. Do not flatten the dough, the cookies will do that by themselves, leave space around them to spread
7.  Bake in a preheated oven for 10 mins for teaspoon sized cookies. Up to 17 mins for larges cookies. Bake until the edges are lightly golden brown.
8.  Cool on the baking tray for a few mins before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely, or eat them all warm before they get chance to cool down.