Chocolate Chip Cookies¶
Recipe first, commentary later.
Dough¶
Ingredients¶
225 g butter (unsalted)
2 little ice cubes (30 mL)
280 g flour
3 g baking soda (1 little packet; 5 g won’t hurt anything)
2 g salt
140 g granulated sugar
140 g brown sugar
2 eggs
10 mL, 2 tsp vanilla extract (the cheap stuff)
225 g chocolate (1 bar + 1 piece Jumbo romige melk)
Brown the Butter¶
225 g butter
2 little ice cubes
5ish minutes on the stove.
Use a medium saucepan and pretty high heat. Stir constantly with silicone whisk. Once things start looking brown or the bubbles abate, remove from heat and continue to stir for 15 seconds.
Pour into heat-tolerant bowl with ice cubes, mix until melted. Stick it in the fridge for 20 minutes.
Dry Bowl¶
280 g flour
1 packet baking soda (3-5 g)
2 g salt
Measure out flour, baking soda, salt into a big mixing bowl.
Wet Bowl¶
2 large eggs (100 g)
10 mL vanilla extract
140 g granulated sugar
Crack eggs, measure sugar and vanilla. Put these in the bowl of a stand mixer. Whisk on medium-high for at least 5 minutes, but longer won’t hurt.
More Prep¶
140 g brown sugar
225 g chocolate
Measure out the remaining ingredients into separate bowls. Chop up the chocolate bar into 1/2-1/4 inch chunks.
Whisk the dry bowl with the flour, baking soda, and salt until it’s all mixed.
The mixture from the stand mixer is done when it comes off the whisk in a thick ribbon.
Mix in Butter¶
140 g brown sugar
Butter from fridge
Switch the stand mixer to the paddle attachment.
When the butter is cooled enough that it won’t insta-cook the eggs, pour it along with the brown sugar into the mixer with the egg-sugar mix.
Mix on medium about 15 seconds. Should be well mixed in.
Add Flour¶
Dry bowl (flour, baking soda, salt)
Add the flour mixture, mix on low for about 15 seconds. This should be just barely mixed in with some dry flour still visible.
Add Chocolate¶
225 g chocolate
Add the chocolate. Mix on low until it looks like cookie dough, about 15 seconds.
Fridge¶
Pour the dough into a sealable container and stick it in the fridge overnight, up to 3 days.
Baking¶
Set oven to 160°C.
Scoop onto parchment paper-lined cookie sheets. Make even-sized balls, then go through and tear them in half and reattach so rough side is on the outside.
Bake in the middle of the oven for 11-16 minutes. My oven spins everything around but if yours doesn’t, rotate half way through.
Commentary¶
Recipes on web sites are frequently terrible. The objective here is to have the steps, in the order they’re done, with the things they need. You don’t have to measure anything before you get to the step where it’s listed, but the ingredients are all listed up front for convenient shopping.
This is based on Kenji’s chocolate chip cookie recipe with a few small changes. I think his cookies are too salty, so I leave half the regular salt and all the sea-salt out. I also left out all the weird measurements because I have a scale in my kitchen and you should too. The vanilla extract is the sole exception because teaspoons are very convenient for measuring.
This is optimized for a stand mixer, because I have one. I’ve made these cookies a few times without one, and it’s much easier with. If you don’t, it’s better to measure out all the ingredients after the butter’s in the fridge and then start mixing. The only really bad part about not using a stand mixer is the 5 minutes on medium-high.
Also, my ice cube tray makes teeny tiny ice cubes. You can probably use a single normal-sized ice cube.