Good chocolate chip cookies
It's not what the ingredients are, but what you do with them. The "what you do with them" (recipe) is in here.
In a way, we’ve perfected choc chip cookies in terms of ingredients - we’ve all agreed on the bits that make up a great choc chip cookie. But we haven’t yet learned how to treat those ingredients with respect.
Like, if you’re going to have that few ingredients in a thing, you may as well ensure they all do their best, you know?
This recipe is loosely based on Claire Saffitz’ choc chip cookie recipe, which of the cookies I tested got the best feedback. The video for that is here.
Choc chip cookie ingredients
220 grams butter, cultured (I like Western Star or Lurpak)
260 grams (2 cups) all-purpose flour
5-8 grams (2 teaspoons) flaky salt
6 grams (1 teaspoon) baking soda
150 grams (¾ cup) dark brown sugar
150 grams (¾ cup) granulated sugar
2 eggs (chicken)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
140 grams dark chocolate chips, chunks, or disks
140 grams milk chocolate chips, chunks, or disks
Time (24 - 48 hours) (important!)
Choc chip cookie instructions
Brown the butter. Melt the butter in a small pan on low/medium and let it start to froth up. This is getting rid of the water content in it, and starting to toast the milk solids. Watch over it and stir frequently (with a rubber spatula if you have one) and wait til the foam starts to subside and you can see the milk solids starting to go golden. This will take you about 5 or so minutes. Turn off the heat. Browning the butter is the most important step, which is why we’re doing it first.
Mix the drys. Get a big bowl, but not so big it will overwhelm you. Put in the flour, salt, baking soda and whisk them together. Using a whisk also saves you from needing to sift the flour.
Mix the wets. Once the brown butter has cooled down (you can put your finger in it and not get a burn), put it in another bowl (make sure you scrape all the brown bits out) and add the two sugars (dark brown, white). Whisk it! Whisk it til your arm hurts, about a minute. It should get smooth and thick. If it’s not, whisk it only a little bit more and then move on
Add the eggs and vanilla to the wets and whisk it some more - you want it satiny and ribbony off the whisk. This should take you another minute.
Combine the wets and drys. Put them all in whichever of your two bowls is bigger. Mix them together until it’s well combined. It’s going to look a little runny, please trust the process. If you have a rubber spatula this is a good time to fold the mixture in to make sure it’s all incorporated.
Fold in the dark and milk chocolates. If you are using disks or a bar of chocolate, it’s fun to have the bits of chocolate varied in size. Chop them up! Have little flecks, but have some big bits in there too. The rubber spatula is good to use for this step. Then, wait for 5 minutes for the dough to firm up.
Step 7 has two options:
Easy, but bad for Future You: just put this batter in the fridge. The main issue with this is that once the batter goes in the fridge, it’s hard to scoop it out because the butter has hardened
Better, but more time consuming: use a ¼ cup measure to make balls of cookie dough and put them on an oven tray. Cover it and put it in the fridge.
Wait 24 hours. This is the second most important step after the butter browning. If you’re really impatient, make yourself one straight away, then wait 24 hours and discover for yourself the difference this makes. Trust the process!!
Preheat the oven to 180c and if you previously followed step 7a, please follow the first sentence of step 7b.
Bake. With about 6 cookies at a time on an oven tray (or more if you want them to be weird shapes) and bake. These will take anywhere between 12-20 minutes. The best indicator for when they are done is that they stop being shiny in the middle. You’ll see.
Finishing touches. Put your cookies on a cooling rack, if you have one, and sprinkle with salt.
Eat. After they aren’t floppy from being hot anymore, you are allowed to eat your cookie. You are welcome to share with friends too <3
Next time, if you want, some dot points on what I learned about making any cookies great through the act of making ~500 cookies.
🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪,
Sam
PS: Cookie clicker.