There’s no place like home.

The chocolate chip cookie is one of the few examples of American bakery that has earned at least some measure of respect on the Continent. Visit one of the more bourgeois bake shops of Paris or Amsterdam and you’re likely to find a small American ghetto section — often stuffed into a far corner — containing blueberry muffins, brownies and chocolate chip cookies…the “greatest hits”, if you will, of American baking. All of them are usually horrible, or at least not what an American buyer expects, as they’re often reformulated without chemical leaveners (which many European bakers find objectionable). But even if they’re not “messed with” in some way, there seems to be something about European ingredients, they simply aren’t up to the task of creating a perfect chocolate chip cookie…just like ours can’t do baguettes or stollen in quite the same way. Call it terroir, there’s nothing like a chocolate chip cookie made right here in the good ol’ USA. No offense, Europeans, but for a classic like this, there’s really no way around the home court advantage.