What is it about a chocolate chip cookie that drives us to try recipe after recipe, forever pursuing chocolate chip perfection?
Whatever it is, the May/June (yes, that’s right, May/June) issue of Cooks’ Illustrated includes a tweaked version of the classic Toll House Cookie recipe that immediately caught my eye in my search for Shangri-La.
I shoudl say that I did not jump on the NYT Chocolate Chip Cookie bandwagon last year, and I haven’t even attempted that recipe, which has made the rounds of nearly every food blogger in the blogiverse. I haven’t found myself anywhere that I could pick up chocolate feves, I don’t always have cake flour, and I usually want cookies NOW, not tomorrow, after resting the dough. That may very well be the cookie I’ve been searching for. I’ll just have to go there one day.
The CI version was appealing for it’s familiar ingredients (flour, baking powder, butter, granulated sugar, dark brown sugar, vanilla, egg, chocolate chips) mixed with just enough kitchen dorkiness to make it something of an adventure.
The real twist in this recipe is that most of the butter is melted and browned before being whisked with the sugars, egg and vanilla. The other different technique is to let that mixture sit for a few minutes between three rounds of whisking.
Sunday dawned rainy and dreary around here (Don’t get me wrong, rain=snow melt!) so I made a batch of the cookies.
Were they perfect? I’m not sure. They were, however, pretty darn good! The browned butter definitely lends a toffee flavor that is more pronounced than in the everyday recipe. The texture is crispy, chewy and moist, but I’m not sure it’s any better than a good traditional cookie.
I’d definitely make these again, perhaps doubling the recipe. The original recipe calls for cookies made of 3/4 cup of dough, yielding only 16 cookies. CI likes the bigger cookie to allow for even more contrast in texture between the crispy outside and chewy inside. I, however, wanted more than 16 cookies, so I made mine smaller and ended up with 28. Those will definitely be gone by Wednesday!
A couple of other folks have already tried the recipe and have their own spin on it, and FamilyFriendsandFood got permission to include a copy of the recipe, if you’d like to check out her thoughts.
So, perfect? I think maybe my perfect cookie would be warm, homemade and baked by someone else in my kitchen, which they clean up after serving me cookies and milk. But maybe that’s just me.
These look wonderful!
Your last paragraph reminded me of something that happened while I was dating my husband. I was telling my mom that my boyfriend had baked me chocolate chip cookies. She exclaimed, “All that work to clean up!” And I answered, “I said he baked me cookies, I didn’t say he cleaned up!”
The cookies look great! I’ve always been fond of the Toll House recipe, so I’ll have to try these.
A great thing to try – I make a quadruple recipe and then scoop all the dough out into balls, flatten them out a little, and freeze them on a tray. After they are frozen I can take them off the tray and store in the freezer in a plastic container. We take out 6-8 at a time and pop them in the oven. It is heaven sent when you have a craving for cookies but don’t want to deal with the mess!
Great suggestion, Maggie! I bet the cookies would last longer that way, there would only be a limited amount to snack on at a time!