Category: News

Empress Of’s Lorely Rodriguez has always put down gripping and emotive indie pop. But now it seems as though Rodriguez is entering the next phase in her artistry, that’ll have her mentioned in the same breath as some of progressive pop music’s best.

On her latest track, “Dance For You,” we get a full-on disco pop assault, produced by Charli XCX and Francis And The Lights beat maestro BJ Burton. Cascading synths and a driving dance floor thump feel akin to the sweaty, diva pop of Róisín Murphy and Robyn. Rodriguez releases her inhibitions and leaves it all out for the beat.

“I love the lyrics on this song,” she said in a statement. “I made this in Minneapolis with BJ Burton. It was freezing outside. I was in a cave-like studio in the snow literally dancing as I wrote this. ‘Surrender to me like this’ is a touching lyric for me because I’m not hurt over this person anymore. I’ve come out the other side.”

“Dance For You” joins the previously released “Save Me,” as the first two tracks to emerge from Empress Of’s newly announced EP, Save Me. The new EP is due out on June 24th.

Watch the video for “Dance For You” above. Check out the Save Me album artwork, tracklist, and upcoming live dates for Empress Of below.

1. “Save Me”
2. “Dance For You”
3. “Turn The Table”
4. “Kept Up”
5. “Cry For Help”

05/27 — Buena Vista Lake, CA @ Lightning in a Bottle Festival
06/18 — Brooklyn, New York @ Brooklyn Mag Festival
08/06 — San Francisco, CA @ Outside Lands

Save Me is out 6/24 via Major Arcana. Pre-order it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Growing up, my favorite Sesame Street character was the Cookie Monster. Elmo came off as an obnoxious, hammy infant and Big Bird’s whole vibe just depressed me, but the Cookie Monster had a singular goal and purpose — to eat cookies. That’s something that resonated with me as a small pudgy child and frankly, still resonates with me to this day. So when my editor asked me to review and rank the top five chocolate chip cookie recipes on the internet I gladly jumped at the chance, even knowing full well that not only would I have to make them all.

Eight sticks of butter, six hours, one broken mixer, and pounds of brown sugar and chocolate chips later, I’m still not sick of chocolate chip cookies. That’s how much I love them.

The chocolate chip is, in my opinion, the perfect cookie. It has this comforting brown sugar and butter flavor with subtle echoes of toffee and caramel and bursts of sweet chocolate in every bite. Even if it isn’t your favorite cookie, it isn’t polarizing like a snickerdoodle or oatmeal cookie — it’s a people pleaser. If you’re planning on making chocolate chip cookies from scratch, you deserve the very best, so we made, reviewed, and ranked the top five recipes on the internet in search of the best-tasting chocolate chip cookie you can make at home.

PART I — Methodology

For our five recipes we did a simple google search for “best chocolate chip cookies ever” and chose the top five results, which were from Joy Food Sunshine, All Recipes, Tasty, Once Upon a Chef, and Pinch of Yum. To keep the flavors consistent I used the same brand of flour, butter, chocolate chips, white sugar, brown sugar, vanilla extract, and eggs for every recipe. I also purchased a fresh box of baking soda instead of using the one in the back of my fridge.

The recipe for chocolate chip cookies is pretty simple, it’s a mixture of sugar, butter, vanilla, egg, flour, and chocolate chips. The only material differences between these five recipes were the ratios of each ingredient, the use of semi-sweet, sweet, or dark chocolate chips, and the technique by which the batter was mixed.

I followed each recipe’s respective preparations as written, which involved making five different cookie recipes in five different (but very similar) ways. This process showed me that the differences in technique — such as sifting flour, hand-mixing, and incorporating ingredients one at a time — didn’t have a major impact on the final result, but things like baking time and allowing your dough to sit did prove big factors. Since all of the recipes had a range of baking times, I prepared batches of the same recipes using multiple times. I’ll note where that is significant.

Now, let’s rank them on flavor!

PART II: A Pro-Tip On Making Aesthetically Pleasing Chocolate Chip Cookies

If you want chocolate chip cookies that look as delicious as they taste, invest in a cookie scooper or save some spare chocolate chips to place on your dough before throwing them in the oven. I don’t have a cookie scooper and I was making every recipe in a single day, so I rolled my cookie dough between my palm for speed and called it a day. That resulted in chocolate chips that stayed internal and hardly ever erupted through the surface of the cookie.

This doesn’t affect the flavor in any way, but if you’re trying to impress someone with your homemade cookies, it’s worth the extra effort.

PART III: The Rankings

5. Joy Food Sunshine

Recipe Notes:

Joy Food Sunshine is a blog created by Laura, a homeschooling mom, and former chemistry teacher. Her simple no-frills chocolate chip recipe has the number one spot on Google. Congrats Laura, I hope you’re raking in the dough (get it?! GET IT??????).

This dough recipe, which produced the highest yield at over 40 cookies doesn’t need to be chilled and calls for the dry ingredients to be mixed separately and makes a point of specifying that you should be using dry-ingredient measuring cups (leveled with a knife), not liquid measuring cups. This is great advice, always use dry ingredient measuring cups when working with flour!

This recipe differs from the others in its use of light brown sugar, baking powder, the highest cooking temperature, and the shortest baking time. Throughout the recipe Laura makes a point to say not to over-bake these cookies, writing “They will not look done when you pull them out of the oven, and that is GOOD.” She recommends a 9 minute baking time, which I followed and… the cookies looked light as fuck. Even when they cooled.

I did the next batch for 11 minutes, and then a final batch for 12 minutes. All look lighter than I’d want them to be. This probably has more to do with the light brown sugar than the bake time.

Tasting Notes:

They’re great, Laura promised a simple chocolate chip recipe, and this is definitely that. The texture is soft and you can give the cookie a slight bend before it breaks in half — probably because of the use of baking powder and baking soda. Not sure I need this pliability though.

Flavorwise, this cookie hits you with sweetness and ends with a salty aftertaste. It’s a bit too salty, and I blame the use of salted butter. If you like salty cookies, you’re better off using unsalted butter, and instead finishing each cookie with a pinch of sea salt after it bakes while it’s still hot. This would result in a more pronounced but less intrusive salty taste. When mixed into the cookie, this ends up with an aftertaste that is largely dominated by salt when it should be dominated by chocolate and sugar.

The Bottom Line:

A few tweaks away from being a great chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Follow Joy Food Sunshine’s recipe here.

4. All Recipes

Recipe Notes:

Before I had made a single one of these cookie recipes, a quick scan of the ingredients led me to assume that this was going to be the clear winner — it’s the only recipe of the five that actually adds a new ingredient: walnuts. I love walnuts, and I love the earthy nutty quality that nuts add to cookies in general, so I was expecting these to be great. They just slightly miss the mark.

This recipe differs from the last recipe in its use of unslated butter, less salt in general, and an extra teaspoon of vanilla extract. Technique-wise it calls for each ingredient to be mixed-in individually, and for the baking soda to be dissolved in hot water before incorporating. I have no idea if this actually changed anything but the cookies turned out a bit more uniform in this batch than any of the other recipes.

The cookies needed to be baked at 350 degrees for 10 mins and that checked out, getting my cookies to look exactly what I think they should look like: light tan to brown with crisped edges.

Tasting Notes:

Sweet and chocolatey, but not overwhelming so. There is a perfect balance of brown sugar, butter, and salty flavors but the walnuts infuse a sort of bitter and dirty aftertaste to the whole thing. Maybe it’s just a bad bag of walnuts, but I actually would’ve preferred this recipe sans nuts.

The Bottom Line:

Delicious but if you’re going to add nuts make sure you get the good stuff. My walnuts came prepacked from the baking section of my grocery store, had I cracked my own walnuts I have no doubt this recipe would’ve come out better and ranked higher.

Follow All Recipes recipe here.

3. Pinch of Yum

Recipe Notes:

Pinch of Yum is a blog written by Lindsay, a former 4th-grade teacher and full-time blogger living in Minnesota. I had some serious doubts about her small yield recipe which utilized less than a cup of chocolate chips, and the lowest amount of sugar. A half-cup of white sugar and a fourth of a cup of light brown sugar all but ensured these cookies were going to be as pale as what Joy Food Sunshine gave us. And I don’t like that!

This recipe also called for the least amount of salt and called for microwaving the butter before mixing it in. Don’t microwave your butter… just let it sit out for about 30 minutes and you’re good. Microwaving the butter risks you putting hot ingredients into your dough, which will cook it. You don’t want that. Lindsay’s recipe didn’t specify what type of chocolate chips to use, so I went with 60% cacao chips.

This recipe also suggested you make 12 large cookies with the dough. So that’s what I did, despite not being a fan of big cookies, personally speaking.

Tasting Notes:

Lindsay may have sold me on big soft cookies. I love this recipe, I had some serious doubts and the cookies are lighter in color than I want them to be, with an almost sugar-cookie-like appearance, but dammit are they good. Each bite is incredibly soft and sugary, with the chocolate chips serving as bursts of rich flavor.

You don’t get chocolate in every bite because of the big size, but when you do it’s ecstasy.

The Bottom Line:

Add more chocolate chips and swap that light brown sugar for dark brown sugar and you’ve got one of the best soft chocolate cookie recipes on the internet. If you like big soft cookies, work off of this recipe.

Follow Pinch of Yum’s recipe here.

2. Tasty

Recipe Notes:

I had no faith in Tasty’s recipe. The website looks like something out of the Geocities era of the internet and it called for me to hand mix the ingredients rather than use an electric mixer, and sift the flour — which I still think did little more than waste my time. This recipe calls for more sugar than any of the recipes, less baking soda, and a mix of semi-sweet and dark chocolate chips.

It also called for the longest bake time, at 12-15 minutes, and produced the least uniform and ugliest cookies of any of the recipes on this ranking. Having said that, who cares what they look like? They’re fucking delicious and that’s all that matters.

Tasting Notes:

This recipe specified that allowing the dough to sit for at least 30 minutes would result in richer flavors, so that’s what I did and it seems to have worked. While these cookies look ugly and have the least consistent shape despite me platting them on the baking sheet with the same method (a tablespoon of dough, palm rolled into a ball), the flavor is noticeably richer here.

There is a slight toffee-like quality to this brown sugar dominant cookie. The flavors shift — at first, you’re hit with buttery sweetness before you get bursts of bitter and rich chocolate ending in a slightly salty finish that is practically begging for a pinch more of sea salt sprinkled on top.

The Bottom Line:

I’m going to go ahead and suggest you go against the recipe and use an electric hand mixer to make this. Finish these cookies with a pinch of sea salt once they’re done baking and we guarantee you this will become your favorite cookie recipe on the internet.

Follow Tasty’s recipe here.

1. Once Upon A Chef

Recipe Notes:

The number four most popular result on Google and our personal number one choice, this cookie recipe rises above the rest. Once Upon A Chef is a blog run by Jenn Segal, a classically trained chef, cookbook author, and mom who used her culinary training to tweak the Tollhouse cookie recipe. It’s funny that the only person who listed culinary training in these recipes utilized a pre-existing and popular recipe but hey, if it’s not broke don’t fix it.

This recipe uses the same amount of sugar as Tasty’s but calls for more flour, which helps the sweetness spread out and results in a more balanced flavor. This was the only recipe that gave explicit mixing times for each ingredient, which I followed to a tee, whether I thought the dough needed more work or not.

Jenn did not lead us astray though, these turned out perfectly. This is the only recipe that suggests you leave your dough in the fridge for a few hours to overnight, so that’s what I did. I think this probably had the biggest impact on flavor, so I definitely suggest you let your dough sit no matter what recipe you make.

Tasting Notes:

Earthy rich brown sugar dominates the flavor here, with creamy chocolate notes in every bite and a toffee and caramel finish. The flavors continue to shift on the palate even when you’re done with the cookie, making this particular recipe especially addicting. Texture-wise this cookie is perfect, it’s perfectly balanced between being soft and pliable on the inside, and crispy and audibly crunchy on the outside.

This is the only recipe that doesn’t feel like it needs any tweaking, and for that, we’re giving it the number one spot.

The Bottom Line:

This requires a little bit of patience but it’s worth it. This is far and above the best cookie recipe on the first page of Google and the one you should work off of as you develop your own perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Follow Once Upon A Chef’s recipe here.

Whoopi Goldberg completely dispensed with pleasantries on Wednesday morning’s episode of The View where she called out Republicans who offer nothing but “thoughts and prayers” after deadly shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas that claimed the lives of 19 elementary school children.

At the top of the panel discussion on the tragic event that arrived on the heels of a mass shooting less than two weeks ago in Buffalo, Goldberg threatened to “punch” the next Republican who responds with empty rhetoric that isn’t backed up by action. Via Mediaite:

“Why are we always at square one with this? And I swear to god if I hear another Republican senator talk about their heart being broken, I’m going to punch somebody. I can’t take any thoughts and prayers,” said Goldberg. “If your thoughts and prayers were with everybody, you would have done something by now. It’s not like everybody’s not trying to make something happen. What the hell is going on?”

Clearly incensed by yet another senseless shooting, Goldberg turned things over to her co-hosts, starting with Joy Behar who was equally tired with Republicans “gaslighting” these situations.

“Stop saying it’s not guns that kill people, it’s people that kill people,” Behar said. “It’s guns that kill people, okay? Stop saying the opposite. Stop saying that mental illness is behind this. There’s mental illness in every country in the world, and they don’t have this problem. So stop gaslighting me on that one, and stop saying that you can have a good guy stop a bad guy with a gun.”

Ana Navarro blasted the lack of action after Sandy Hook, and how a decade later, an 18-year-old still has easy access to “weapons of war.”

Sunny Hostin highlighted how guns are the “leading cause of death in children” in America:

And Sara Haines urged a passing of red flag laws in every state, which would’ve prevented the Uvalde shooter. “Can’t we all agree that people that have a problem or have threatened people should not have a weapon for a period of time?” Haines said.

(Via Mediaite)

After the tragic school shooting in Texas that took the lives of 21 people, including 19 kids, CBS has pulled the fourth season finale of the cop show FBI, which featured an attempted school shooting plotline.

The finale follows the titular FBI team as they investigated an armed robber that turned out to be a student. According to the episode synopsis: “As the team investigates a deadly robbery that garnered a cache of automatic weapons for the killers, they discover one of the perps is a classmate of Jubal’s son, who is reluctant to cooperate with the case.”

Instead of the episode, CBS will air a rerun from February with no plans to air the pulled finale yet. The season finales of the FBI spinoff shows FBI: Most Wanted and FBI: International will still air this week as scheduled.

Several stars and government leaders have responded to the heartbreaking events by encouraging action and stricter gun control laws. As the media reacts to the tragedy, there is an unfortunate history of TV episodes being pulled from the air surrounding the events of a school shooting. A week after the 1999 Columbine shooting, an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer was pulled after it featured a student bringing a gun to school. Over two decades later, this stuff is still happening.

(Via Deadline)

“Seacrest out” has just taken on a whole new, and NSFW, meaning.

On Monday morning, as the New York Post reports, Ryan Seacrest told his Live With Kelly and Ryan co-host Kelly Ripa about an unfortunate wardrobe malfunction that occurred over the weekend. Seacrest was working one of his 72 other jobs—this one as the host of American Idol, which was filming its season finale—when he was informed by his stylist, Miles, that his underwear was creating a problem.

“Apparently, America voted, and decided there was anatomy in the shot,” Seacrest joked of the so-called “penis panic.” When Miles told Ryan that they needed to change his undies pronto, Seacrest informed him that “I didn’t bring any extra underwear.”

Without missing a beat, Miles informed Ryan that “Don’t worry—I’ve got mine.”

It should be noted that Ripa was not impressed with the impromptu plan, and pointed out that they could have easily just “change[d] the camera shot—crotch up,” but the ol’ skivvies switcheroo was already in motion.

While Ripa didn’t really seem all that interested in hearing how the story ended, Seacrest kept going:

“So we go backstage during the commercial and find a little corner. And I’m literally taking off my pants, off my underwear and putting his on… Guys, anything for the show, right? It’s a family show.”

Ripa was adamant that she would have simply had the crew change the camera angle, because “women do not share panties.” Seacrest, really pushing the TMI envelope, noted that: “For the record, they weren’t panties. They were tight, elastic underwear.”

When Seacrest’s stylist heard that his drawers were making headlines, he took to Twitter to offer a little more information—including the fact that they were Calvin Klein.

(Via New York Post)

Drake’s fondness for the game of basketball is evident in his many, many courtside appearances at NBA games. It’s also clear in the videos he posts from his in-home basketball court where he hosts pickup games with his friends and trains his son to play like LeBron James. However, it looks like one of his friends is feeling left out. Quavo, who is a hoops junkie in his own right, working with grassroots leagues in California and balling out in NBA2k22, lobbied for inclusion in the fun at The Sanctuary (the nickname of Drake’s home court) in a post on Instagram.

“@champagnepapi They don’t want Us At The OVO Arena So We Take 7 Footers Instead,” he captioned a video on his Instagram Story. In the video, Quavo faces off with a taller opponent at the Georgia Tech gym, showing off some nasty handles and quick footwork to shake his defender for a stepback 20-footer. It’s an impressive combo and the sort of thing that could have Quavo moving up LeBron James’ rappers-who-hoop rankings, where Lil Durk currently reigns supreme.

Personally, I’d love to see a rapper-centric league where the likes of Quavo, Drake, 2 Chainz, Durk, and official professional player J. Cole can square off to show their other talents. For now, we’ll have to settle for social media videos or maybe Jack Harlow’s White Men Can’t Jump remake and Kawhi Leonard commercials.

The Brooklyn Nets are heading into this offseason with a number of major questions, the biggest of which is the long-term future of Kyrie Irving. As of this writing, there is no indication of which direction Irving is leaning on his player option worth about $36.5 million, but no matter what he does, Irving can hit the open market no later than next summer.

It raises the question of what a possible extension will look like from Brooklyn. General manager Sean Marks has already said that the team will sit down with Irving this offseason to talk about an extension and “see if it’s the right fit for both sides,” and according to a new report by Kristian Winfield of the New York Daily News, this is going to include the Nets being resistant to giving Irving a long-term extension.

In layman’s terms, if Irving leaves the Nets, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Durant becomes frustrated with the organization’s ability to put championship pieces around him. They failed to do so at the beginning of last season, with none of their top offseason acquisitions – James Johnson, DeAndre Bembry or Jevon Carter – finishing the year in Brooklyn.

This is why, as I’ve already written, the Nets’ championship hopes hinge on an amicable solution with Irving, whose personal decision not to get vaccinated and unpredictable injury history have left the Nets hesitant, and now, according to a source familiar with the Nets’ thought process, outright unwilling to give him a long-term extension.

Irving appeared in only 29 games last season due in large part to his refusal to get vaccinated against COVID-19. It led to him getting labeled as “one of the absolute professionals at missing work” by Stephen A. Smith, who argued that Irving should only get 1-year extensions going forward. Winfield addressed this in his piece, writing that Irving’s camp would view that sort of extension as “unacceptable.”

It’s been a tough few weeks for NFT lovers. Earlier this month, Seth Green lost his beloved Bored Ape NFT which he was planning to turn into a sitcom star for some reason. The NFT was stolen during a phishing scam, along with several more of his expensive doodles. The ape was sold for over $200k (!) and Green has taken to Twitter to plead for his little friend (named Fred) back, but it doesn’t look like it’s gonna happen!

Buzzfeed News reached out to the new NFT owner, who goes by Mr. Cheese, and is allegedly a surgeon hailing from Australia. “I have no plans for the ape,” Mr. Cheese, formerly known as DarkWing84, told Buzzfeed.

“As you can see I have been collecting for a while. I bought it because I liked it,” the mysterious Cheeseman added. “It wasn’t a cheap buy either and was not marked as suspicious so I bought it in good faith. I’m happy to be in contact with Seth to chat about this.”

It seems like, despite all of Green’s pleading, the elusive Mr. Cheese hasn’t really been keeping up with the drama. When asked if they’d consider returning the NFT, they added, “Haven’t really thought about it as this is all very new news to me. Can you arrange contact with him?” Green is now following Mr. Cheese’s Twitter account. Perhaps Mr. Cheese will land a role on Green’s TV show!

A month out from their upcoming self-titled album, Muna has released “Home By Now,” a new single in which the Los Angeles-based trio dwells on a breakup, wondering if they’ve made the right choice.

Rife with pulsing synths and bass, the ’80s-influenced track features the group’s Kate Gavin asking, “Would we have turned a corner if I had waited? Do I need to lower my expectations? If we kept heading the same direction, would we be home by now?” It’s a song that beautifully embodies the feelings of loss while offering a form of solace on the dance floor.

“‘Home By Now’ is the song on the record that we feel might be closest to our first album in that it’s a dance song with brutal lyrics and an emo bridge, said Gavin in a statement. “It’s a breakup song that’s a bit more full of longing and doubt than ‘Anything But Me.’ While a lot of this album does seem to be about trusting my instincts, this song acknowledges the pain of not knowing if I left a relationship that I was meant to be in.”

Check out “Home By Now” above.

Muna is out 6/24 via Saddest Factory. Pre-save it here.

In the wake of such tragic events as the school shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on Tuesday, many people take to social media to express their grief and frustrations about how a lack of gun laws have led to a generation of Americans who have grown up amidst an epidemic of gun violence in the places where they should feel safe.

As Mediaite reports, Ruben Gallego is one of the people who was overcome with anger and emotion following the needless murder of 21 people, including 19 children, during yesterday’s attack. Unlike the rest of us, Gallego also happens to be a Democratic Congressman from Arizona. Still, that didn’t stop him from going off on Texas senator Ted Cruz, who claimed that while he was just as heartbroken as anyone else in the country that nearly two dozen people were senselessly killed, he doesn’t think that restricting gun laws is the answer.

“You see politicians trying to politicize this,” Cruz said, in a statement that clearly politicized the issue. “You see Democrats and a lot of folks in the media whose immediate solution is to try to restrict the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. That doesn’t work. It’s not effective. It doesn’t prevent crime.”

Gallego was having absolutely none of Cruz’s bullsh*t—especially in light of the Texas senator’s extreme pro-life stance. In a series of tweets, he suggested that Cruz was better off just getting his “a** to Cancun. You are useless.”

In case anyone misunderstood his message, Gallego sent another tweet in which he outright called Cruz a “f*#king baby killer.”

Cruz wasn’t Gallego’s only target. When Darrell Issa, a Republican congressman from California, tweeted the much-maligned “thoughts and prayers,” the Arizonan told Issa what he could do with his thoughts and prayers in no uncertain terms.

(Via Mediaite)