It happens every few weeks: I crave a fresh-out-of-the-oven chocolate chip cookie.  I'm then left with one of two choices:  I could venture out and try to find a bakery that's just removed a batch of cookies from the oven, but the chances of arriving at a bakery at that perfect moment are slim to none.   Or, I could make my own.  This is usually the route I go, but I'm always left with about 5 cookies too many and the cookies became stale before I eat them--and I really don't want to eat that many cookies in the first place.

Last week, I finally solved this problem, though I'm not sure why I hadn't tried this before.  I made a full batch of chocolate chip cookies and baked 4 of them.  I shaped the rest of the dough into balls, then flash froze them on a cookie sheet before transferring them to a freezer bag padded with wax paper.  (This stroke of genius is courtesy of Smitten Kitchen's Deb.) Now when I have an insatiable craving (my internal clock says this should happen in the next few days!), I'll just remove an already formed dough ball, pop it into the oven for a few minutes longer than the below recipe states (to account for the freezing), and enjoy. As an especially decadent bonus, I used Mast Brothers' dark chocolate chips for my cookie batch.