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Excellent Recipe for Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
This recipe requires a little more time and patience, but as Alton Brown from the Food Network always says, “Your efforts/patience will be rewarded.” How to describe what makes this recipe and these cookies the best? Here’s some reasons in no particular order: 1) It is adapted from a recipe seen on America’s Test Kitchen, 2) My mother refuses to share any of hers with her own grandchildren, as cute and precious as they are, 3) My ex-husband—not known to be a chocolate chip cookie lover—eats as much, if not more, of them as I do and will even take the last one, 4) My sister hides them from her husband and daughters whenever I give them to her family to share (advance notice always goes to my brother-in-law, but my sister is evasive), and 5) As a self-proclaimed connoisseur of chocolate chip cookies, I have not tasted anything better.
Fast Facts:
- Active prep time: 5 minutes
- Inactive prep time: 9 minutes
- Yields approximately 28 cookies if using rounded teaspoon
- Bake at 375 for 11-14 minutes
What is your favorite cookie?
Ingredients:
- 14 tablespoons unsalted butter (a lot, but hey the cookies have to become good somehow)
- ½ cup white sugar
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 whole egg + 1 egg yolk
- 1 ¾ cups flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 1 ¼ cup chocolate chips
Directions:
1. Melt the butter in a microwave safe measuring cup (about 60-70 seconds if not at room temperature)
2. In a large metal bowl whisk together sugars, salt, vanilla extract, and eggs.
(Here’s where the bulk of the inactive prep time comes in).
3. Let the mixture stand for three minutes and repeat two times (I take this time to line the cookies sheets with parchment and Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit)
4. Add flour, baking soda, and chocolate chips to the wet mixture.
5. Stir to combine evenly.
6. Using two teaspoons, round off batter so you have three evenly spaced mounds towards the top of the sheet and three towards the bottom. If you use teaspoons and not tablespoons, you can fit two extra cookies on the sheet between the rows. (Spacing is crucial because they cookies do spread a lot).
7. Bake 11-14 minutes.
8. Let cool for two minutes. Then transfer to paper towel lined platter.
Changes to Original Recipe/Tips:
- I don’t remember the show specifying the type of butter. But if you use salted butter, do not add the salt listed or else you will have saltlicks instead of cookies.
- The original recipe called for browning some of the butter. This was more labor intensive, added a slightly nutty flavor, but nothing to write home about considering the use of a pan and high risk of burning the butter.
- Do not measure over the bowl. You can potentially add too much that you can’t take back out.
- Use the left over egg white for later cooking in an omelet or something else.
- I use unbleached flour to make me feel better about all the butter that goes into the recipe.
- I eyeball 1 ¾ cups of flour—I know baking is a science, but when I measured the exact amount the dough was a little stiffer. While the cookies were soft, it was almost too fluffy and cake-like for me. Doing a little less, very little, results in a cookie that is slight crunchy on the outer rim (still soft though) and soft and chewy in the middle: the best of both worlds. Also, it seems like there is a hint of a butterscotch flavor.
- I recommend semi-sweet chocolate chips. But I have done a mix of semi- and bittersweet: it provides a nice surprise and more complexity of flavor.
- On the show they said they stumbled upon the wait time when one of the testers took a phone call and starting whisking again. His cookies tasted better than the other versions.
- I switch to a spoon after whisking in the flour (I add it in about thirds or else it can become unmanageable) because the batter just gets stuck in all the tines.
- The original recipe called for baking one sheet at a time (it took forever it seemed like to get through all the batter). They showed what the cookies looked like (unevenly browned) if not. I just rotate the placement of sheets midway through the cook time and have had no problem: top goes to the bottom rack and vice verse.
- When baking, check the edges of the cookie for doneness. If the whole cookie is golden or brown, it will be overdone by the time you take them out due to carryover cooking.
- The paper towel I find wicks away some extra butter and condensation if some cookies are still a little too warm.
Other Baking Recipe
For my other cookie recipe: