New York Times' Chocolate Chip Cookies

New York Times' Chocolate Chip Cookies

I normally don't follow food trends and believe the cookie everyone says is the BEST really is the BEST, but this one is the exception. These cookies are really the ideal crisp on the edges and chewy in the middle cookie that most people just adore in a chocolate chip cookie. They're even still great the next day, which is something I very rarely say. 

I think I found this recipe on 3 different websites, but am linking We Are All Magic here because it's a sharp looking website. I did add salt to the dough, which at least two of the sites I went to did NOT include. They both did have Maldon Sea Salt as an option to sprinkle on top of the cookies though. Additionally, I browned 3/4 cup of the butter because my favorite chef Claire Saffitz does that frequently in her cookie recipes.

I highly recommend you use the best chocolate you can find & afford because it does make a difference. And do take the time and effort to to brown the butter because it also takes these cookies to the next level. Do it.

And enjoy.


New York Times' Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adapted from weareallmagic.com

Ingredients:

• 8.5 ounces cake flour (2 cups minus 2 tablespoons)
• 8.5 ounces bread flour (1 2/3 cup)
• 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt (Diamond Crystal; if using Morton's use 3/4 teaspoon)
• 1 1/4 cups (10 ounces or 2 1/ 2 sticks) butter
• 10 ounces packed light brown sugar (1 1/4 cup)
• 8 ounces white sugar (1 cup plus 2 tablespoons)
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1.25 pounds good quality chocolate chunks or chips (about 3 1/3 cups -- I use Nestlé Dark Chocolate Morsels)
• 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (toasted), optional

Instructions:

• Place 4 ounces (1 stick) of the butter in a large mixing bowl. Brown 3/4 cup (6 ounces or 1. 1/2 sticks) of the butter by heating it in a heavy bottomed pan over medium low heat, stirring almost continuously. When the butter solids are a deep golden brown, carefully pour the melted browned butter over the other butter in the butter in the mixing bowl, making sure to scrape all of the browned butter into the bowl. Allow to cool to room temperature before using. You can stir the butter to speed this up a little.

• While the butter cools, sift together the flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.

• Add the brown sugar and white sugar to the butter in the mixing bowl. Beat butter and sugar on high until light and fluffy. 

• Add eggs and vanilla and beat again until light and fluffy again.

• Add the flour, soda, baking powder, and salt mixture and mix on low just until combined. 

• Stir in chocolate chips/chunks (and nuts, if using) to distribute evenly.*

• Line a rimmed baking sheet with wax paper.

• Scoop dough in about 2-3 tablespoon dollops/balls and place on wax paper in prepared pan. Smoosh each ball down into a thick disk. When all dough has been portioned, cover and refrigerate or freeze. If you plan to bake the next day, just refrigerate. If you want to have dough on hand to bake a few at a time, freeze and then transfer frozen dough to zip top freezer bags. Bottom line: the dough is best when chilled for at least 12 hours.

• When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 30 minutes.

• Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place dough discs on the parchment-lined pan, about 2 inches apart. 

• Bake at 350 degrees F for 13-15 minutes or until edges are starting to turn golden brown.

• Remove from oven and allow to cool on pan for about 5 minutes before moving to a cooling rack to cool completely. 

• Store baked cookies in an airtight container and consume within 2 days for best taste. 

Makes about 3 dozen 4-inch cookies

*Today I divided the dough in half and added half of the chocolate chips to one half of the dough. To the other half of dough, I added a fourth of the chocolate chips and probably 1 1/2 cups of chopped pecans. I like to give people choices.

Weighing the ingredients works best for me.

Browned butter and sugars

The butter and sugars didn't quite get fluffy today.

After the addition of eggs

With nuts and without

Ready to bake

Post-bake

Ready for the freezer

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've got a LOT of chocolate chip cookies on this blog, and right now this one is my favorite. The recipe all started when I wanted to make sugar cookies using my new Heilala Vanilla. Long story short, I had to use some of the dough for chocolate chip cookies, and wow. These were so good. 

Sweet & chewy with layers of caramel and browned butter flavors, with creamy dark chocolate chips. Mmm. A cookie exceptional enough to warrant its own post here. 

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients 

• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) butter
• 1/4 cup Crisco
• 1 egg
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 tablespoons water
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar 
• ½ teaspoon baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• 2 ½ cups King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
• 10 ounce bag of Nestlé Dark Chocolate Morsels
• 1 ½ cups chopped pecans (optional)

Instructions

1. Prepare the browned butter by placing 4 tablespoons of the butter into a small heat-safe mixing bowl.  Place the remaining stick of butter in a small saucepan over medium-low heat. Stir with a silicone spatula until it's foamy on top and you can see the butter solids turn a deep golden brown color. Pour hot browned butter over the 4 tablespoons of butter in the small bowl. Allow to cool completely before proceeding. 

2. Cream cooled butter, Crisco, egg, vanilla, & water in a medium size bowl. (This may take a little while for the wet ingredients to emulsify and turn creamy.)

3. In a large bowl, stir together with a whisk the sugars, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and flour.

4. Combine the creamed mixture with the dry mixture just until it comes together (do not over mix). Add the chocolate chunks and pecans & mix to incorporate.  Refrigerate dough two hours or over night. (I also scoop all my dough and freeze the dough balls on a wax paper lined cookie sheet.  Once frozen, I transfer them to a gallon zip-top bag.)

5. Preheat oven to 375°F. Scoop dough into balls that are about 2 tablespoons and place them one inch apart on a parchment lined cookie sheet. 

6. Bake 8-11 minutes, or until puffed and light brown around the edges.

Makes about 4 dozen cookies

Butter -- some browned, some not

All of the wet ingredients get mixed together first.

I love seeing all of the flecks of browned butter at this stage.

Sugars, flour, salt, soda, and baking powder get mixed.

Nestlé Dark Chocolate Chips are my current fav.

I almost always scoop and freeze my choc chip cookie dough.

Some of these have nuts and some don't. All delicious though.

Browned Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

 

Browned Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I'd like to say I've finally found my ultimate favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I think I may have said something like that before...several times...so I'll just say this one is my current favorite. I took the other Levain Style Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe I have here and tweaked it to omit the need for self-rising flour (since I'd been mixing it up on the side anyway with ingredients that were duplicated in the recipe) and I've browned a quarter of the butter. And I've given up on bagged chocolate chips for the time being and am sticking with my favorite Dove Dark Chocolate. They're worth every penny and every minute of unwrapping and chopping them up. 

So what we have here is a relatively dense, tender, soft, chewy, chocolatey, buttery, nutty chocolate chip cookie. If you eat them fresh, they're also melty with a crisp edge. Mmmm. 

Browned Butter Chocolate Chunk Cookies

    Adapted from Cupcake Jemma's Recipe on Youtube

Ingredients: 

• 230 g cold butter, divided
• 160 g granulated sugar
• 160 g brown sugar
• 450 g dark chocolate chunks (I used Dove Dark Chocolate)
• 200 g walnut pieces (optional)
• 430 g all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions:

• (Scroll to the photos at the end to see what this unconventional process looks like.)
• The night before you plan to mix up the dough, brown four tablespoons of the butter. Place in a glass container, and either refrigerate or allow to sit at room temperature.
• Beat the eggs and vanilla together in a small-ish bowl and set aside.
• Cut the cold butter into tablespoons sized chunks and then add that and the browned butter to the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix on low for about a minute, just to break up the butter--do not cream the butter. 
• Add the granulated and brown sugar to the butter and mix again on low/medium low until little nuggets of butter & sugar form--again, do not cream this mixture. (If you refrigerated the browned butter you may need to cut it into smaller pieces.)
• Add the chocolate chunks and walnut pieces (if desired), and mix again just to incorporate the chocolate chunks and walnuts.
• In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir with a whisk until completely mixed. 
• Add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/chocolate/walnut mixture in the mixing bowl and mix on low until combined, about 30-45 seconds. It will still be dry and sandy looking.
• Add the vanilla to the egg mixture and then add that to the mixture. Mix on low/medium low until dough starts to come together, taking care not to mix too long.
• Using a large cookie scoop or a large spoon, make 60 gram gently formed balls of dough -- it's best if you don't pack the dough into a tight ball. Then flatten each ball into a disk that's about an inch thick.
• Cover and freeze dough disks at least 90 minutes before baking.Preheat oven to 360 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place in the oven to get hot while the oven preheats.
• When pan and oven are heated, remove the pan from the oven, place frozen dough disks on pan allowing a couple of inches between them.
• Bake at 360 degrees for about 14-15 minutes, until puffed and starting to crack. Take care to not over-bake. Underbaked is better than over-baked.
• Remove from oven and allow to cool on cookie sheet at least five minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely. Alternately, if you have a rimless baking sheet, you can slide the parchment with the baked cookie sheets onto a cooling rack to cool until ready to eat, about 5-10 minutes. This is what I try to do so the cookies will not continue to bake on the hot baking sheet.
• Place unbaked dough disks in a zip top freezer bag and store in the freezer until you want more cookies. 
• Store baked and cooled cookies in an airtight container.
• Heat cooled cookies in the microwave on high for 10 seconds if you want to melt the chocolate.

Butter & browned butter are mixed a bit, but not creamed.

Add sugars to the butters & mix until...

Butter & sugar mostly mixed until it's an almost uniform chunkiness
with some chunks of butter remaining.

Add the chocolate chunks and walnuts. Yes. Different.

Then mix in the dry ingredients until it looks like what you see below.

Lastly, add the eggs and vanilla.

Mix until you have something that looks like this.

Weigh out 60 g portions.

Form into a thick disk, making sure to not make it too tight.

Place on a wax-paper lined pan, cover and freeze until solid.

Before baking.

After baking.

I actually baked these like a minute too long. Still good though.

Toffee Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Toffee Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I've been trying new flavors in the basic Levain-style cookie recipe, and today it involves mixing toffee chunks in with chunks of Dove Dark Chocolate. I have to say this is a winner: tender, melt-in-your-mouth cookie with crisp, flavorful toffee and just enough bits of chocolate. 

I made the toffee from scratch, because I can, but you can also purchase Heath toffee bits, and I'm sure they'd be fine. I wanted better than "fine," though, so I went the extra mile. Click here to see the recipe for the toffee bits/chunks.

These turned out quite a bit flatter than I thought they would, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I'm sure if I were to add nuts to these, they'd not be so flat, but today is a no-nut day. I only baked up six of these and plan to bake up the rest next week to take to work. 

Toffee Chocolate Chunk Cookies

    Adapted from Cupcake Jemma's Recipe on Youtube

Ingredients: 

• 237 g unsalted butter, cold (2 sticks plus 1/2 tablespoon*), divided
• 160 g granulated sugar
• 160 g brown sugar
• 250 g dark chocolate chunks (I used Dove Dark Chocolate)
• 230 g toffee pieces (homemade or store-bought, but homemade is better)
• 430 g all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Instructions:

• (Scroll to the photos at the end to see what this unconventional process looks like.)
• The night before you plan to mix up the dough, brown 65 g of the butter (1/4 cup plus 1/2 tablespoon), place in a glass container, and refrigerate overnight. 
• Beat the eggs and vanilla together in a small-ish bowl and set aside.
• Cut the cold butter into tablespoons sized chunks and then add that and the browned butter to the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix on low for about a minute, just to break up the butter--do not cream the butter. 
• Add the granulated and brown sugar to the butter and mix again on low/medium low until little nuggets of butter & sugar form--again, do not cream this mixture. Note: you may need to get a butter knife and cut the cold browned butter into smaller pieces at this point. Mine was too firm and needed cutting.
• Add the chocolate chunks and toffee pieces (if desired), and mix again just to incorporate the chocolate chunks and toffee.
• In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Stir with a whisk until completely mixed. 
• Add the dry ingredients to the butter/sugar/chocolate/toffee mixture in the mixing bowl and mix on low until combined, about 30-45 seconds. It will still be dry and sandy looking.
• Add the vanilla to the egg mixture and then add that to the mixture. Mix on low/medium low until dough starts to come together, taking care not to mix too long.
• Using a large cookie scoop or a large spoon, make 60 gram gently formed balls of dough -- it's best if you don't pack the dough into a tight ball. Then flatten each ball into a disk that's about an inch thick.
• Cover and freeze dough disks at least 90 minutes before baking.Preheat oven to 360 degrees Fahrenheit. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place in the oven to get hot while the oven preheats.
• When pan and oven are heated, remove the pan from the oven, place frozen dough disks on pan allowing a couple of inches between them.
• Bake at 360 degrees for about 14-15 minutes, until puffed and starting to crack. Take care to not over-bake. Underbaked is better than over-baked.
• Remove from oven and allow to cool on cookie sheet at least five minutes before moving to a wire rack to cool completely. Alternately, if you have a rimless baking sheet, you can slide the parchment with the baked cookie sheets onto a cooling rack to cool until ready to eat, about 5-10 minutes. This is what I try to do so the cookies will not continue to bake on the hot baking sheet.
• Place unbaked dough disks in a zip top freezer bag and store in the freezer until you want more cookies. 
• Store baked and cooled cookies in an airtight container.
• Heat cooled cookies in the microwave on high for 10 seconds if you want to melt the chocolate.

Makes about 30 large cookies

* When you brown the butter, you lose some of the water in that process, so I added another 1/2 tablespoon to make up for it. I don't think the cookies will be ruined if you don't add that extra 1/2 tablespoon of butter, though.

Break up the butter

Mix in the sugars.
Check for large browned butter chunks and cut as needed.

Add the chocolate and toffee

Mix in the dry ingredients before adding the eggs & vanilla
(forgot to snap a pic of that)

Dough is all mixed and ready to be formed into discs

Discs are frozen solid before baking