Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
This recipe is adapted from one in Cook’s Illustrated.
- Flour: Cook’s Illustrated specify bleached flour which they
claim has a more optimal protein content, but I’ve only ever used
unbleached King Arthur Flour. I
also decreased the salt from ½ tsp, and the total sugar by
¼cup.
- Vanilla: I recommend using either Cook’s Cookie Vanilla or a
50/50 misture of Tahitian and Bourbon (“regular”) vanillas (I
usually use Nielsen-Massey).
You will really notice the difference in the cookies compared to plain
vanilla.
- Chocolate chips: My favorite commercially available chocolate
chips are Guittard, although Ghirardelli is also decent. I prefer semisweet
chips, certainly over milk chocolate abominations, but also over bittersweet
ones such as Ghirardelli Double Chocolate Chips. Although I’m normally
a fan of dark chocolate, I think the sweetness of the cookie dough
doesn’t go well with very bitter chocolate.
- Baking: I use Chicago
Metallic aluminized steel cookie sheets, which I’ve been very
happy with, although most cookie sheets will work fine as long as your oven
heats evenly. The important thing with the sheets is that they have no or
very shallow sides (most baking sheets have straight sides). The open sides
allow the cookies the brown more evenly on their sides instead of just the
top. You should also make sure that your oven has an accurate thermometer. I
have a separate oven thermometer I use, and discovered that my oven is pretty
far off.
 |
| 2⅛ |
cups |
Unsifted all-purpose flour (9 oz.) |
| ¼ |
tsp |
Salt |
| ½ |
tsp |
Baking soda |
| 12 |
tbsp |
Unsalted butter (1½ sticks, or 6 oz.)
melted and cooled until warm |
| 1 |
cup |
Brown sugar minus 2 tablespoons |
| ¼ |
cup |
Granulated sugar plus 2 tablespoons |
| 1 |
|
Whole egg |
| 1 |
|
Egg yolk |
| 2 |
tsp |
Vanilla extract |
| 2 |
cups |
Chocolate chips |
|
- Preheat oven to 325°F. Put racks in two middle positions.
- Mix flour, salt, and baking soda, reserve.
- Mix melted butter and sugars well. Mix in the egg, egg yolk,
and vanilla just until blended.
- Add the dry ingredients, mixing until 95% combined, and stir in
the chips to combine everything (the goal here is to avoid working the dough too much).
- Form into 18 big cookies, 9 cookies per sheet.
- Bake for 15–18 minutes, switching the two sheets about 12 minutes
though. If the tops of the bottom sheet are behind in browning as
the ending time approaches, you can switch them again for even
browning (the sheet on top will brown faster).
- Take out as soon as the top looks dry and a little bit crusty and is just
starting to barely get a little brown color. The insides will still be gooey.
- Let them cool on the cookie sheets (don’t take them off to cool).
As they cool, the insides will firm up and become chewy.