
RECIPES	SEARCH	ORGANIZE	PEOPLE	ME

chewy chocolate chip cookies

adapted from a Cooks Illustrated recipe that I found to be too fussy but had the perfect answer to attaining that melt in your mouth cookie.

I like my cookies to have a chewy quality to them. Don't care too much for thin and crispy chocolate chips cookies. I guess I just like the feel of oozing chocolate and chewy dough like my mouth is being assaulted by all this goodiness.

The next batch is going to be partially whole wheat to see how that goes as far as affecting texture and adding more teeth to the cookie.

Ingredients:

2 cups (9 oz) all-purpose flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

1 1/2 stick (3/4 cup/6 oz) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

1 cup (7 oz) packed dark brown sugar

½ cup (4 oz) granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 egg yolk, from a large egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 cup (6 oz) semi-sweet chocolate chips

1 cup (4 oz) walnuts, chopped (optional)

Directions:

1. Place oven racks in the upper and lower 1/3's of the oven. Pre-heat oven to 325º F. Cover cookie sheet with parchment paper.

2. Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

3. Blend together butter and sugars until smooth.

4. Add egg, yolk and vanilla. Mix until incorporated.

5. Add dry ingredients and mix until just combined.

6. Stir in chips and optional nuts.

7. Form your balls whatever size you like, CI recommends 1/4 cup as these will give more structure to your cookie. I use a 1 1/4" cookie dough scoop. Evenly space on each cookie sheet, approximately 2" apart.

8. Bake for 12-15 minutes, rotating front to back and top to bottom after 6 minutes. Adjust according to how large your cookie balls are. Cool on sheets to maintain chewy texture.

Notes:

the brown sugar provides the acidic, catalytic ingredient for the baking soda to leaven. vaguely recall in my previous experiments, using baking powder resulted in cookie batter that spread out too much.

one of the keys to this recipe is melting the butter as opposed to the usual method of creaming it. if you cream it, you will get more of a cakey texture. but allowing it to cool to the desired consistency also effects the structure and texture. if you immediately mix the melted butter in, you will get an oily gob of cookie dough not at all desired for that nice good-mouth-feel I want. if you allow it to cool a bit until it almost becomes opaque, you will get a chewy cookie with a crisp exterior.

another key ingredient is the brown sugar which adds more moisture. if you don't have dark brown sugar on hand, sub 1 cup of granulated sugar and 2 tablespoons of molasses (1 tablespoon of molasses for light brown sugar). you might also want to adjust the vanilla for this and just use 1 tsp.

and most important of all, remove them right before you think they are done. edges should just be turning golden and the top is no longer wet but the dough should still be tender. they will continue to cook as you cool them down.

you can freeze the uncooked dough and store in freezer for that quick hot cookie fix. i place the dough balls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper and freeze until they are set enough that they don't stick together. takes about an hour or 2. store in ziplock freezer bags. i pop them out of the freezer and straight into the oven. you might want to adjust the oven temperature down 5-10 degrees and/or increase the time, a bit, to ensure that the cookies are properly baked through. i've never really had to adjust but there might be a difference from oven to oven.

if you want to look at a breakdown of the dynamics of cookie making, the blog Dessert First has an entire post comparing 4 different recipes with luscious images.

interesting article from Simply Recipes about snickerdoodles which mentions using cornstarch to change texture of cookie. will have to test this out perhaps with whole wheat to give it more tenderness.

Categories:

Meal Snack	Dish Cookie
Cooking Method Baked	Prep Time less than 15 minutes
Cooking Time less than 15 minutes
Features Vegetarian

Comments:

matriarchy

1 yr ago

Fabulous. I just made chocolate chip cookies the other day and was saying that I was bored by my old recipe. I very much like chewy cookies, too, but I wasn't sure what changes to make to achieve that - I love your food chemistry knowledge.

blackbirdpies

1 yr ago

thank you, Matriarchy. i'm a bit of a geek with food science and there is still so much more to know. i can usually futz around with recipes if i know what the separate ingredients do. sometimes reckless experimentation produces some great dishes. the only problem is remembering to write it down. so having an understanding of what things do allows me to have more freedom to toss a little-bit-of-this-into-a-little-bit-of-that and write everything down later.