I like my chocolate chip cookies chewy too and I do it all the time. Here is what I do:
- Flour: I use a higher gluten flour instead of AP, such as Bread flour.
- Eggs: An additional egg yolk will help
- Sugar: A bigger Brown Sugar to Sugar ratio helps but not vital if you do not have brown sugar at hand.
- Butter: Butter should be melted. I think this is the key to chewiness.
The recipe is straightforward: cream butter with sugar, add wet ingredients, incorporate dry ingredients slowly and lastly add the chips.
Be sure to chill the dough for at least 30 min. The more you rest, the better. See this NY Times Article for effects of resting the dough.
Preheat while doing other things. That's not a step that should take any effective time.
Don't measure so obsessively. Unless these need to be immaculate cookies, just accept a little variety. Scoop roughly with a spoon, or just your hands, and form into balls with your hands if necessary. If you desperately want precision, you could use a cookie dough scoop. But 56±3g sounds kind of over the top to me. Given that you said this is the main time sink, I'd suggest loosening up a bit.
Are you filling your cookie sheets fully? Do they fill your oven? Following a recipe's instructions to the letter, baking only 9 per sheet, is obviously the wrong thing to do if your cookies or baking sheets aren't the same sizes as those in the recipe. Note also that if you have many cookies per sheet, you can often fit more by tiling in triangles instead of squares.
And finally, reconsider your recipe. I'm sure this one is great, but keep in mind that most standard chocolate chip cookie recipes bake at 350F or 375F, and times more in the 8-12 minute range. If your recipe gives you exactly the cookies you want, and others don't, then stick with it, but if you're unnecessarily sticking to a recipe, try something else.
Edit: one more thought! Chilling the dough is probably important to your recipe, but you could measure/scoop while it's warmer and easier to work with, then chill in balls, and do the final forming once chilled.
And another, having seen your comment: given that you increased the baking time upon filling up the oven more, and are using insulated pans, you might actually want to increase the temperature to 350-375F and see if you can get back down to the 15-18 minute baking time. They may end up closer to the originally-intended consistency!
Best Answer
I've found the key to be chilling the dough. If you can get it really cold, put it on room temperature baking sheets, and put it in a well preheated oven, you get a lot less spread and therefore a considerably thicker, cakier cookie, which I also prefer. If I mix the batch in my KitchenAid, I'll put the metal bowl in the coldest part of the refrigerator for 30 minutes to an hour before portioning and baking, with great results.