In the Kitchen: The Vanilla Bean Baking Book Chocolate Chip Cookies (Kind Of..)
One of my favorite deserts is a classic chocolate chip cookie. If it's warm even better. I think I've made every recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I have the Toll House recipe memorized. I've tried what the New York Times claims is the best recipe of all time. I've learned nearly every tip and trick to making the best cookies ever. I've even made up my own recipes. I guess I'm a little...obsessed; so naturally when the cookies from the Vanilla Bean Baking Book kept popping up on my Instagram feed I knew I had to give them a try.
I don't recall how I was introduced or stumbled upon Sarah Kieffer's blog, The Vanilla Bean Blog, but I just know I always want to make everything she shares. The cookies appear in her cookbook, and are supposed to look like this. Why do I mention that? Because I kind of had to make them a little different for this test. I set out with the very best intentions of making them EXACTLY as her recipe calls for. I'm a stress baker so one quiet Wednesday afternoon I decided to give it a go, but then my neighbor happened.
The recipe calls for dropping the tray of cookies onto the rack multiple times over a span of about 6 minutes or so which is fine unless you live in an apartment. After dropping the tray just ONCE my upstairs neighbor began to make as much noise as possible to show his disapproval. Now of course he doesn't realize just how loud his stomping, slamming of kitchen drawers, or phone vibrating on the floor is almost daily so my innocent dropping of a tray was completely lost on him. I very well could have kept on dropping the tray (screw that guy, right?), but I was already a stressed out headcase so I changed it up a little.
Verdict: I would definitely make these again. I didn't get to keep them around very long because everyone wanted them. I decided to drop the tray only once after the first 10 minutes as the recipe called for in order to get the one crispy outer ring. The center was gooey and remained even after being stored in an air tight container. Dropping the tray only once made them almost like deli style cookies. Very similar to the gigantic ones the deli by my office used to sell. This is something I was never able to recreate on my own, so props to Sarah (unknowingly) helping me out with that one. I was skeptical about the large amount of dough used per cookie, but it's VERY IMPORTANT to use that much. It will get you less cookies but it's completely worth it.
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