The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Chocolate chip cookies...

rainwater's picture
rainwater

Chocolate chip cookies...

Please, could someone share their best chocolate chip cookie recipe.....I usually use the recipe on the back of the Hershey's chocolate chip bag, and use butter. Thank you.

Janedo's picture
Janedo

This is a great recipe when you have some time

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/091crex.html

Jane

LindyD's picture
LindyD

That Nestle recipe is still my favorite.  Cooking for Engineers has refined it to weight measurement (hurrah!).

rosiePearl's picture
rosiePearl
JIP's picture
JIP

These cookies:

 

Were made from this recipe:

THICK AND CHEWY CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Makes 1 1/2 dozen 3-inch cookies

These truly chewy chocolate chip cookies are delicious served warm from the oven or cooled. To ensure a chewy texture, leave the cookies on the cookie sheet to cool. You can substitute white, milk chocolate, or peanut butter chips for the semi- or bittersweet chips called for in the recipe. In addition to chips, you can flavor the dough with one cup of nuts, raisins, or shredded coconut.

2 1/8 cups (2 cups plus 2 tablespoons) unsifted bleached all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled until warm
1 cup brown sugar (light or dark)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1-2 cups semi- or bittersweet chocolate chips/chunks

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower-middle positions. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.

2. Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in chips to taste.

3. Form scant 1/4 cup dough into ball. Holding dough ball using fingertips of both hands, pull into two equal halves. Rotate halves ninety degrees and, with jagged surfaces exposed, join halves together at their base, again forming a single cookie, being careful not to smooth dough's uneven surface, see illustrations, "Forming Chocolate Chip Cookies," PDF, below. Place formed dough onto one of two parchment paper-lined 20-by-14-inch lipless cookie sheets, about nine dough balls per sheet. Smaller cookie sheets can be used, but fewer cookies can be baked at one time and baking time may need to be adjusted. (Dough can be refrigerated up to 2 days or frozen up to 1 month-shaped or not. See "Freezing the Dough," by clicking the link below.)

4. Bake, reversing cookie sheets' positions halfway through baking, until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes (start checking at 13 minutes). (Frozen dough requires an extra 1 to 2 minutes baking time.) Cool cookies on cookie sheets. Serve or store in airtight container.

 

They are the best cookies I have ever made.  The book I make them from http://www.amazon.com/Baking-Illustrated-Cooks-Magazine-Editors/dp/0936184752/ref=pd_bbs_sr_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233719647&sr=8-9 the Cooks Illustrated Baking book has their measures as weights and volume which I like to use better.  Also the technique for shaping is important.  You make a ball like 1/4c if I remember correctly and then split it in half and put the sides together to have a rough edge up.

bakerincanada's picture
bakerincanada

Thanks for the great picture.  These cookies look tasty.  My son has a tree nut allergy and if we want baked goods we must bake them ourselves.  I am encouraging him to take a hand in the baking.  I want to try your recipe; if you get a chance could you give grams or ounces measurement for the flour as I don't have access to the book.  As discussed I too have found that weighing the flour gives best results.  Thanks.  Bakerincanada.

dstroy's picture
dstroy

You know...I'm just sitting here giggling like mad over these comments. Especially the recipes that are super complicated :) I'm sure they make great cookies, but in light of what I saw this weekend this thread is particularly funny to me.

This weekend my 4 year old went over to a neighbor's house to visit their little 3 year old girl and I watched the two of them make cookies all by themselves...as in literally. See, her mom made this neat little "visual recipe cookbook" with pictures of the ingredients and they were all color codes with their colored measuring utensils like cup, half-cup etc and measuring spoons and such and the girls "read" it off the pictures and then marked off the ingredients with a dry-erase marker.

Most of the ingredients made their way into the proper mixing bowls, but a lot of them got dumped on the counter and we're not entirely sure if an extra measure of this or that got put in as well. The cookies turned out delicious though, (moms did the actual putting in the oven part) but it was definitely an eye opener for me to see just how forgiving a chocolate chip cookie recipe can truly be!

 

Here's the recipe card they were using! This particular card was missing the butter, which we added in for the girls. Our neighbor said she was going to redo this card because she'd forgotten that part.

 

Wisecarver's picture
Wisecarver (not verified)

...Thanks for sharing that, love it. :-)

johnster's picture
johnster

How perfect is that idea?  A few more recipes like that and your neighbor needs to land an agent and a publicist.

 

Thank you for that post!

 

John

davec's picture
davec

That is wonderful!  We have two 3-year-old grandchildren, and both love to help me bake.  Your friend really should pursue publishig those cards.  I'd buy them.

Dave

Paddyscake's picture
Paddyscake

I bet they had a blast and feel like very accomplished bakers!

Betty

Marni's picture
Marni

Ilove it!  I'm too lazy to make them myself, i'd love a kids cookbook like that. The girls must have been so proud of themselves!

Marni

alabubba's picture
alabubba

If she makes it, I would buy it. She needs to publish a cookbook and include the color coded measuring cups/spoons. I think a lot of people would be interested in something like this. What a great way to engage children in the kitchen.

Danni-loves-2-cook's picture
Danni-loves-2-cook

I've baked cookies for over 30 years and it's my experience that an additional 1/4 cup flour in the dough makes for a nice soft cookie. I also bake my cookies at 325 for 12-14 minutes and then let them rest on the cookie sheet before transferring to the cooling rack. My last batch of oatmeal white chocolate cookies I made last week are still nice and chewy. 

 

Good luck!

 

Danni

Danni-loves-2-cook's picture
Danni-loves-2-cook

BTW, when/if I ever have grandchildren, I will try to remember this recipe card to make for them. This is such a great idea! 

Danni

gijose's picture
gijose

if you like them thin, crispy, and full of chocolate...

Tates Bake Shop Chocolate Chip Cookies

Maeve's picture
Maeve

I have my own recipe that I've been tweaking for years, but it evolved from the recipe on the back of Ghirardelli chocolate chips.

 

Really, the trick is to have excellent quality ingredients and sorry, but Hershey's doesn't cut it.  I prefer dark chocolate chips from a company near Hershey, called Wilbur's, but Ghirardelli is good too (I like the 60% bits)  I also use very strong vanilla and unsalted butter, half KA bread flour and half home milled white whole wheat flour.

Those instructions above sound interesting, I think I'll give it a go next time I bake cookies.

 

My recipe:

Chocolate Chip Cookies


350 grams flour (mix of white whole wheat/KA bread flour)
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground cinnamon (optional)
pinch of espresso powder (optional)
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
140 grams sugar
160 grams brown sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp strong vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts (optional)
1 11.5oz bag Ghirardelli chocolate chips


Heat oven to 375F.  Mix flour with baking soda and salt, set aside.  In large bowl cream butter with sugar, brown sugar, eggs and vanilla, gradually add flour mixture, stir in nuts and chocolate chips.  Use a cookie scoop, drop onto parchment papered baking sheets.  Bake at 375F for 9 to 11 minutes or until golden brown.   (makes 36 cookies and a glob left over to put in the freezer to nom on later)

MIchael_O's picture
MIchael_O

I want to see if may baking calculator is working

CChip Cookies: I have found the most accepted traditional CChip cookie to be around

0.272(Moistnesss), ~16.7% (Butter), and ~0.63 (Egg)

or 2 1/16 ap flour, 11 Tbsp Butter, 1 large egg, 0.5 large egg yolk

Name         Moistness,  Butter Content,  Egg Content

======================================

 JIP           0.299, 17.65%, 0.82E

New TollH   0.303, 18.8%, 0.73E

Maeve       0.333,20%,0.8E

C&M          0.37, 22.22%, 0.89E

Tates        0.416, 25%, 1E

 

Moistness should be less than 0.30

Butter Content should be below 20%

The higher the E number (last number)  the more cake-like the cookie is.

 

Tates, from my numbers your cookie is definitely more like a brownie/cookie bar, .ie extra thick and chewy

Maeve, yours has slightly higher than the usual fat and is real chewy and thicker than a usual chocolate chip cookie

JIP, your cookie is the most traditional cookie, using 2 1/3 cups flour instead of 2 1/8 would have yielded the perfect chocolate chip cookie, JIP is there any reason why you chose 2 1/8? Did the original recipe call for 2 1/3 flour?

 Chrst. and Marilyn's cookies should be thick and a little more butter than a usual chocolate chip cookie(in fact this is the original tool house cookie recipe)

JIP 's recipe would definitely be the most authentic chocolate chip cookie

Tell me if I got these correct or not, I am saying all this from the recipe, I havent baked any of these cookies.

 

Michael O.

 

http://www.whatsthesequency.com/cakey.php

Maeve's picture
Maeve

My cookies are chewy.  They are just crisp at the very edge.

 

But I also use part whole wheat flour, that I mill at home (using the Nutrimill)  So I can't guarantee my recipe will come out the same if someone uses different whole wheat or just regular flour.  I use white whole wheat.  It's been a long time since I used just flour, but I vaguely remember that using AP flour made them a bit less chewy.