Chocolate chip cookies
Recipe type: Biscuit, Dessert
Cuisine: English
Likhain linked to this recipe for the best chocolate chip cookies from Serious Eats, and I knew I had to try it. I love Serious Eats–great website with tons of cooking tips, and they actually explain why things are working (or not working) so you can see why you’re doing what you’re doing. And mmm those cookies are just divine!
I changed a few things: namely, I’m really not a sweet tooth person, so I went to a 2/3-1/3 ratio of flour to sugar rather than half/half, and hum. I kind of didn’t follow half the instructions because my hands were in the flour mixture and the recipe was on my tablet. But they still tasted awesome!
Also, a helpful tip for NOT doing the chocolate with a knife (which results in my wanting to scream every single time). Take the chocolate tablet from the foil. Snap it into very rough chunks with your fingers. Then put the chunks back in the outer wrapping paper. Get a granite pestle, and pound that wrapping paper until your coarse chunks have become 0.7-1.25cm chips of chocolate, perfect for putting into the dough. (the trick of using wrapping paper is that, if you do this directly with the chocolate, the pestle ends up smeared in melted chocolate. The paper acts as a heat insulator from the pounding movement. I’m not doing it with the foil because the insulation layer will end up torn and jagged, and picking little bits of foil out of chocolate majorly sucks).
- 250g butter
- 1 large ice cube
- 380g flour
- 1 teaspoon table salt
- 1 pack baking powder (11g)
- 140 g sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 40g brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 200g dark chocolate, crushed into chunks
- Coarse sea salt
- Start by browning the butter: put it on medium high heat in a medium saucepan, melt it, and keep cooking it, swirling gently all the while. When it starts developing brown particles and a nutty smell (5-10 mins), take it off the heat, swirl it until it becomes a rich golden brown (~15s). Then transfer to a medium bowl, whisk in the ice cube, and put it in the fridge to cool down for 20 minutes.
- Meanwhile, mix in about 350g of the flour, the salt, and the baking powder. Then add sugar, and eggs, and mix again: the mixture should be fairly compact so this is better done with your fingers! .
- Add the brown sugar, the butter mixture, the vanilla extract, and mix. Add the chocolate and mix. Then add the rest of the flour little by little: you may not need all of it (I did!). You want a clumpy mixture that's easy to roll into balls.
- Transfer to an airtight container, put in the fridge, and leave overnight to develop flavour.
- Get said container out of the fridge an hour or more before you're ready to bake, and let it soften at room temperature.
- Preheat oven to 160°C.
- When ready to bake, form little balls of around 1-2 tablespoons. Tear them in half, and put them back again together with the rough edges facing outwards. Then gently flatten them on a rack covered with baking paper. My oven takes around 12 cookies on a baking sheet, your mileage may vary.
- Bake for 20 minutes, or until the edges turn slightly brown.
- Get the rack out of the oven, sprinkle the cookies lightly with coarse salt, and press down with the flat of something heat-resistant to insert the salt grains into the hot dough (I used a butter knife). Then transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool. Repeat for next batch.
- Store in airtight container for up to 5 days.
