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 think usually use Guittard semisweet chips for the regular variant, and Guittard Extra Dark chips for the less sweet variant.
• 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, some of the apartments I have rented have had quite far off ovens.

2⅛ 170 9 1 85 4.5 cups g oz Unsifted all-purpose flour plus one tablespoon ¼⅛ tsp Salt ½¼ tsp Baking soda 12 170 6 6 85 3 tbsp g oz Unsalted butter (1½ sticks¾ stick) melted and cooled until warm 1 170 6 ¾ 150 5.4 ½ 85 3 ¼ 75 2.7 cupgoz Brown sugar minus 2 tablespoons1 tablespoon plus two tablespoons 6 75 2.6 ¼ 55 2 3 38 1.3 2 28 1 cuptbsptbsp g oz White sugar 1 Whole egg 1 Egg yolk 1 Egg with half the white discarded 21 tsp Vanilla extract 2 340 12 1 170 6 cups g oz Chocolate chips

Recipe variants Full recipe (18 cookies) Half recipe (9 cookies) Regular sweetness Less sweet US volume Metric weights Imperial weights

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Put racks in two middle positions.
2. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda, reserve.
3. Mix melted butter and sugars well. Mix in the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla just until blended.
4. 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).
5. Form into 18 big cookies, 9 cookies per sheet.
6. 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).
7. 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.
8. 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.