{TWD} "Perfect" Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

For this week's Tuesday's With Dorie recipe, Kait of Kait's Plate chose a cookie Dorie calls "My Best Chocolate Chip Cookie" I made this recipe previously, back when my blog was just a few weeks old, and posted them here. At that point I had begun a quest in earnest to discover the best CCC recipe. My mission got pretty quickly derailed as I got caught up in lots of other baking for the weekly TWD recipes. I've managed to bake several other CCCs, and I've learned is that tastes really do vary in what constitutes the perfect CCC. Some people like cakey cookies, others prefer chewy, and thin and crispy cookies have their fans as well. I can safely say that Dorie's best CCCs weren't my best CCC, although plenty of people love them.

Seeing as I'd already tried Dorie's version of chocolate chip cookies, I figured that I might as well use this week to bake a new CCC contender. On this week's P&Q post for the Chocolate Chip Cookies a wonderfully helpful comment by Peggy the Baker mentioned a Cook's Illustrated chocolate chip cookie recipe that sounded very different and delicious. Bingo! I had the cookie to bake this for this week.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the CI recipe for "Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies" here or here. The recipe for Dorie's cookies is on Kait's post.

- The recipe has a very unusual method. About 2/3 of the butter is browned on the stovetop first, then the rest of the butter is added to the hot browned butter. Once the sugars - granulated sugar and dark brown sugar - are added, the mixture is whisked several times for 30 seconds at 3 minute intervals. Then the dry ingredients are stirred in, and finally, the chocolate.

- I did not want wimpy brown butter, so I kept it on the heat until the butter solids were quite dark, possibly too dark.

- The recipe for my old stand-by chocolate chip cookies (recipe on this post) has a little bit of lemon juice. I'm tired of saying to myself, "I like that new cookie recipe, but I miss the complexity that the lemon juice provides," so I added a teaspoon of lemon juice to my cookie dough. The flavor is undetectable as "lemon" and I've read that lemon juice makes cookies more tender.

- My baking buddy Leslie baked the cookies just before I did, and she gave me some tips. She suggested using a premium chocolate, and bittersweet (around 70% cocoa) rather than semi-sweet (usually in the 50-60% cocoa range, and added sweetness). I followed that suggestion. She loved the dough so much and mentioned that I might want to bake a cookie or two without any chocolate, so I did that, too. (By the way, go check out Leslie's wonderful CCC taste-off post which included her very own CCC recipe - it looks fantastic!)

- The recipe says to divide the dough into 16 pieces to bake. My dough weighed 888g, so I made several of the cookies 1/16 size, or 55.5g. Those cookies turned out to be pretty huge, so for the rest of the dough, I made 40 g balls of dough. They baked up to a more "normal" cookie size. I froze most of the balls for a future side-by-side comparison with some of my other favorite CCC recipes.

- I've got to note here that the raw dough, although a tiny bit greasy, had fantastic flavor.

the verdict:

I love the texture of this cookie, wonderfully chewy without being under-baked. I think I did over-brown my butter, so my cookies were ever so slightly bitter. The bittersweet chocolate was a good pairing with the flavors of the cookie, but I found myself wishing that I'd used a little more chocolate since bittersweet isn't as sweet as semisweet would have been. So these cookies were not perfect for me but they were very very good. I'd like to bake them again, making a few more adjustments.

Thanks, Kait, for choosing Dorie's chocolate chip cookies and giving me the opportunity to branch out this week.

"Exactly As Written": Thomas Keller's Chocolate Chip Cookies and an Ad Hoc At Home Giveaway!

"Exactly As Written"

That approach to trying new recipes is very appealing, especially in theory - how else can you know how good a recipe truly is? For various (I think good) reasons however, in practice I often change recipes the first time I prepare them. But when on the hunt for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe, I'm not likely to stray from the recipe. Especially when the recipe's author is Thomas Keller.

I've been eagerly anticipating the release of Thomas Keller's cookbook Ad Hoc at Home. His other books, notably The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon, while beautiful and undoubtedly filled with amazing recipes, are a little beyond my culinary reach. But Ad Hoc, the restaurant Keller opened to celebrate home-style and home-y food, seems a lot more accessible and I was hoping the cookbook would be as well.

My copy of Ad Hoc at Home arrived on my doorstep this week, and my intentions to save it for Christmas lasted about a nano-second. Before I knew it, the shrink wrap was off of the book and - oh, my! - what beautiful photography and delicious sounding recipes are inside the book.

It seemed easiest to start with a cookie. And what cookie is more iconic than a homemade chocolate chip cookie? Keller's recipe has some interesting twists, and I went into the baking session with the intention of following the recipe to the letter. I wanted to see what the Keller touches would produce. "How refreshing," I said to myself, "to be able to say, for once, that I made the cookies 'Exactly As Written'."


n.o.e.'s notes:

- You can find the recipe for the Ad Hoc Chocolate Chip Cookies here.

- The recipe calls for two different kinds of chocolate, one sweeter and one more intense: 55% (a semi sweet) and 70-72% (a bittersweet). In an attempt to meet the letter of the law, I visited a couple of stores to locate just the proper chocolate. Finding the 70% was simple, but I did have to settle for 54% rather than 55%.

- The recipe calls for "molasses sugar", and I'm pretty sure that's the same thing as dark muscovado sugar, which is readily available, if not exactly common.

- Keller's directions provide for chopping the solid chocolate, then sifting it in a fine mesh strainer to shake out the chocolate dust. I didn't do that when I baked the New York Times cookies, and you can see how the little bits of chocolate melted into the dough. I'm pretty sure that this is more an aesthetic consideration than a matter of taste.

- The butter is creamed in two parts, which is a step I've never come across in a cookie recipe.

- Before mixing, I measured each ingredient (Exactly As Written) and had it ready in a cup or bowl. Once my dought was mixed, I noticed 1/4 c of the sugar sitting on the counter, so I stirred it in. Then I re-read the recipe and discovered I'd forgotten 1 T flour, so I added that and stirred a bit more.

- For me, 2 tablespoons of dough weighed 40 grams. I weighed out that amount of dough for each cookie, then rolled it into a ball. I baked half a dozen (chilled in the fridge first, although the recipe doesn't say to chill it) and froze the rest for future baking sessions. The dough yielded around 2 dozen cookies.

- I wish I could report how long these cookies took to bake, but I forgot to set the timer. Luckily the recipe has a great done-ness test: bake "until the tops are no longer shiny."


the verdict:

There are many things that I love about these cookies. Love the two kinds of chocolate. Love the dark toffee flavor from the molasses-tinged sugar. Love the chewy centers. Love the precision of the recipe (even though I wasn't able to replicate it faithfully in my kitchen!) Are these THE chocolate chip cookie? I'm going to waffle here, and say that I need to bake them again, and maybe do a side to side taste test. I will say that they are much better once they've cooled than warm from the oven.

My cookies baked a little darker on the bottom than I'd like, so I'll have to fiddle with the temperature and oven rack placement in my oven when I thaw and bake the remaining cookies. And even though it isn't written in the recipe, I think I'll sprinkle a bit of sea salt on the tops (a la the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies and Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies.)

As for the foray into "Exactly As Written" territory? I used the correct ingredients, but still I hit the inevitable, for me, snags. No matter what virtues I may have in the kitchen, it seems that I cannot stick to a recipe even when I'm trying! But now I've read the "get organized" section of the cookbook and figured out where I probably went wrong: although I pre-measured all of the ingredients, I didn't immediately put the containers and packages away in their respective places. In other words, if my work surface had been neater, I probably wouldn't have overlooked the sugar on the counter. And careful reading would have clarified the correct amount of flour in the ingredient list. I'm pretty sure that stirring in these ingredients out of turn didn't make a huge difference in the finished product, but it's instructive nonetheless!

the giveaway:

This blog entry is the 300th time that I've hit the "Publish Post" button. I love marking the big round numbers by giving something to the folks who stop by my corner of the food blogisphere; this time around I'm giving a copy of Thomas Keller's book Ad Hoc at Home. It's hot off the presses, and is already a runaway hit! Check out Michael Ruhlman's blog post about the book reaching the New York Times best seller list, and here's a clip of Thomas Keller talking about Ad Hoc at Home:




You'll no doubt be seeing Keller's recipes on food sites all over the internet, but here is your opportunity to own your very own copy of this gorgeous - and hefty! - cookbook. All you have to do is leave a comment on this blog post by 5:00pm Eastern Standard Time on Wednesday, November 18, 2009. I'd love it if you'd answer any or all of these questions in your comment (but it's not required):

When trying a new recipe, do you make it Exactly As Written (and can you do it successfully)?
What's your favorite chocolate chip recipe?
What's your favorite comfort food dish?

I'll let a random number generator choose the winning comment.

The New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie

Last summer the New York Times made quite a stir in the baking world when it published an article about Chocolate Chip Cookies with an accompanying recipe. The claim was that these cookies, based on those of Jacques Torres, were no less than the best chocolate chip cookies ever.

Like most bakers I have a "go to" chocolate chip cookie recipe (find it on this post) but I thought I should embark on a quest to see what really IS the best chocolate chip cookie. I made a start (with Dorie Greenspan's cookiesand the Copycat Levain Bakery cookies) but quickly got derailed; I haven't baked any chocolate chip cookies at all in more than a year!

Earlier this week there was a lively discussion amongst my fellow baking Twitterati about the New York Times cookies, and a bunch of us decided to do a virtual NYT CCC bake-along. I wanted something chocolate-y to serve to my book group (to go along with apple turnovers) so these cookies sounded perfect - and would knock a recipe off the "to bake" list.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- One of the biggest keys to success with the NYT recipe is to mix the dough at least 24 hours, but preferably 36 hours, before baking time. I mixed the dough on Wednesday morning, and baked the cookies Thursday evening - about 30 hours later.

- The NYT recipe can easily be found by Googling.

- This is an all-butter recipe, as opposed to my standard recipe which is 2/3 shortening, 1/3 butter.

- Although a full batch makes a big bowl of dough, the yield is only 18 cookies. 5 inch cookies, that is! Although the huge cookies sounded intriguing, I made 1/2 batch, and portioned my dough a bit smaller than the recipe specifies. I needed to have enough for 7 book group members and more to pack up in a box for my mom's bridge group.

- The NYT recommends using flat discs of chocolate. I wasn't going to make a special chocolate run, so I foraged around in the chocolate drawer. I was happy to find Ghiradelli baking pieces, which are actually small flat disks, and an assortment of bar chocolate. I used some of the baking pieces and some chopped Newman's Own dark chocolate. Both of the chocolates were around 72% cocoa. One thing I liked about chopping chocolate is that the dough ended up with all sizes of chocolate - from tiny bits to biggish nuggets.

- The recipe calls for coarse salt in the cookie dough. I have some very coarse sea salt, which is what I used. Additionally, salt is to be sprinkled on top of the cookies just before baking (this was included by the NYT based on a tip by Dorie Greenspan.) I scattered fleur de sel pretty sparingly over the cookies.

- 1/2 batch of dough yielded ten 2 oz balls (which were big cookies) and ten 1.5 oz balls (which were not small). My cookies all spread while baking, so I ended up with thin and chewy cookies, which are my very favorite type. The funny thing is that both amounts of dough produced cookies that were around 4" wide.

- These cookies are definitely better the sooner they are eaten. I think that's because they are butter based - they get a bit dry the following days.


the verdict:

The comments of my tasters mirrored the nearly-universal acclaim these cookies have recieved since the recipe was published:

HY - "this is the best cookie I've ever eaten. It's better than your regular choc chip cookie and it's better than mine"

AT: "I"m not getting into 'good, better, or best,' but this is a really delicious cookie"

The biggest issue of discussion was the salt. Our book group likes salty food, but we waffled about the salt in these cookies. AT liked the salt at first, then wondered if it was a bit much. Her husband, JT, said "I like the salt piece." I think the coarse salt in the dough was a bit aggressive. Every couple of bites there'd be a little salt pocket, and I decided it was distracting from the wonderful texture and chocolate flavor.

I brought the leftover cookies to my mom and put them directly in her freezer to wait for bridge day. She thought they looked delicious, and I wouldn't blame her if she sampled one or two before the card game - I know I would!

And here's where I need to make a pronouncement about these famous cookies. I'll admit that the NYT cookies are worthy CCCs. Spectacular, even. At the same time, maybe I'm a creature of habit, but I did miss the subtle complex flavor of my usual cookie. Oh, and there are just a few more chocolate chip cookie recipes that are begging for me to try them. So the quest will continue, but in the meantime I have two great recipes that I'd proudly serve.

The CCC Quest, Round 2

Since starting our search for the greatest Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe (see Round 1 here), we've been accumulating more and more (and more) recipes to try. Looks like there are a lot of CCCs in our future!

Although the NYT article started the Quest, we haven't yet made the NYT recipe (we haven't had bread flour on hand). So for the second round we whipped up a batch from Dorie Greenspan's recipe (you can find it in Dorie's book Baking From My Home to Yours, page 68, or online here). We were fresh out of chocolate chips, so we chopped some Callebaut semisweet chocolate into chunks. My daughter j.d. and I made these, and she wasn't going to wait 1 hour for the dough to chill, much less 36 hours (a la the NYT article), so we baked them right away.

The cookies started on the baking sheet as ball-shaped scoops, but once in the oven they radically spread out. We used the wonderful photos in the King Arthur food blog to test for done-ness (we like our CCCs soft in the middle).

The Verdict:
I like a flat chocolate chip cookie, but Dorie's cookies were too flat. The taste was good, actually quite good, but it didn't match the subtle perfection of flavor of our standby recipe (I posted the recipe previously).

What is your quest???

As I previously posted, the "best" CCC is a hot question in the baking world right now. We are on a mission to see if any of the contenders can top our old stand-by cookies, which are the perfect combination of large, chewy, soft and crispy, PLUS, loaded with chocolate (I've updated the previous post to include our recipe). In the course of necessary cookie internet surfing I came across an interesting article about the little changes in a recipe that cause CCCs to come out soft, chewy, cake-like, crisp, crunchy, or spread-out.

Today my daughter j.d. baked a copycat recipe of the famous Levain Bakery CCCs (which won the Bobby Flay Throw Down), with a few of her own touches and the dough tasted amazing. She scooped out a generous amount of dough to make big cookies and they cooked up puffy and fat, but spread very little.

The Verdict:
The cookies were really good, but IMO they don't match the perfection of our regular recipe. I like a cookie that is flat and gooey in the center and slightly crisp at the outer edges. These were too puffy and cake-like for my taste.

CCC Face-Off

It seems like everyone in the online baking world is talking about the recent New York Times article about chocolate chip cookies. There's a lively discussion at the King Arthur Flour blog, joined by the article author himself (the KAF people prefer their recipe). Also baking doyenne Dorie Greenspan blogged about the article (she's the one who suggested the salt to the author).

Our family's old standby CCC recipe is the modestly-titled "Chocolate Chip Cookies at Their Best" from the Sunset Magazine Favorite Recipes II cookbook (out of print but widely available used). We've always gotten rave reviews when we've made these cookies. "Our" recipe has oats and also some cinnamon, which give a real subtle boost to the texture and the flavor of the cookies, respectively. Sunset also calls for a 2-to-1 shortening ratio. Cooking with shortening really bothers me. While I've been using trans-fat-free shortening, it still has an "ick" to it. So I look forward to testing the all-butter NYT recipe. And then maybe Dorie's. Or Alton Brown's. Or Baking Illustrated. But then again, why mess with the Best?

[updated]
Here's our recipe:
Chocolate Chip Cookies at Their Best
Sunset Cookbook of Favorite Recipes II

1 cup solid shortening
½ cup butter or margarine, softened
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
4 eggs (or equivalent egg substitute)
1 tablespoon vanilla
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ cup regular or quick cooking rolled oats
3 cups all-purpose flour
2 large packages (12 oz. each) semisweet chocolate chips

1. In large bowl of an electric mixer, beat shortening, butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar at high speed until light and fluffy (about 5 minutes).

2. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.

3. Beat in vanilla and lemon juice.

4. In another bowl, stir together baking soda, salt, cinnamon, oats and flour.

5. Beat into creamed mixture until well combined.

6. Stir in chocolate chips.

7. For each cooky, drop a scant ¼ cup dough on a lightly greased baking sheet, spacing cookies about 3 inches apart.

8. Bake in a 340° oven for 16 to 18 minutes (or less) or until golden brown.