In the Kitchen: 'Perfect' Chocolate Chip Cookies
I won't lie. I think I've probably baked every chocolate chip cookie recipe claiming to be the "best." As a teenager I think I made the classic Nestle Tollhouse recipe so often I had it memorized for many years. Sadly as an adult you begin to realize the chocolate chip/dough ratio is so poor no matter how many chocolate chips you add in. More recently my go-to was the NY Times recipe which uses cake flour and bread flour rather than all-purpose flour. But it has a wait time which is often really hard to abide by when it comes to baking. Eating the dough is rather tempting when it's just sitting there for an extended period of time. Then I moved on to a sea salt chocolate chip recipe I adapted from somewhere else, and made it so much people grew tired of it.
So that brings me to this past December and my constant quest to create the perfect Christmas cookie tin/tray. I went searching for the ideal chocolate chip cookie that was yummy but would provide a sense of timeless comfort for my friends and family. I was alerted to a random Buzzfeed article where they taste tested a variety of recipes created by famous chefs and Kourtney Kardashian (why?). Their winner was Thomas Keller's Perfect Chocolate Chip cookies, and upon inspection of the ingredients I thought why not give it a shot.
perfect chocolate chip cookies
How did it go?
I decided to adapt it rather than bake it straightforward. First I found it pretty strange the recipe required two very specific types of chocolate containing percentages of said chocolate when really it's just dark and semi-sweet so that was off-putting. I also realized it lacked vanilla extract. I wasn't sure if I copied it wrong or what so I added some. It's not a cookie without it, duh. And removing the "chocolate dust.." well I stopped doing it after the first batch because it just doesn't make sense to me, and I don't think anyone I bake for is really going to notice all that much. When I cut the chocolate chunks and bar into small pieces and scooped them into the bowl, much of the dust was left behind already. Putting it in a mesh strainer just created a bigger mess than leaving much of the dust on the cutting board.
Final Thoughts:
Overall I can't tell you if the original recipe indeed creates the "perfect" chocolate chip cookie, but I can say these create some pretty delicious (and crowd-pleasing) cookies. The cut butter technique really saves the arms of someone who doesn't have a stand mixer like yours truly. There wasn't a struggle followed by a mental breakdown trying to get the butter just right because smaller pieces are easier to work with. Even better if you let them soften just a bit. The switching racks technique I thought would be really annoying, but it actually helps create a gooey center with crispy outer rims. I definitely recommend tweaking the cook time based on individual ovens because they are all really different. I made these in two different ovens and one 12 minutes made a perfect gooey center cookie while another only took 10. It's essential to me to underbake the middle of my cookies so they are just perfect when they are done resting and aren't too brown. You can see the chocolate, its gooey, melty, and pleasing to the eye.
Pressed for time I used a cookie scoop rather than measuring "two level teaspoons" so I ended up creating gigantic bakery-style cookies. Not that my intended eaters were disappointed in that. I literally don't have a single picture of the end product because they were gone in a flash which begs the question, why am I even sharing this? I don't know, but it's my blog and it's happening. As far as tasting goes, they were very similar to my favorite Paradise Bakery chocolate chip cookies, especially in the middle. I was really surprised and happy about that seeing as how those cookies are incredibly hard to come by now (no thanks, Panera). So now I know at least I'll be able to recreate something similar on a whim.
Below you'll find my adapted recipe and on a brand new recipe card! Find Thomas Keller's original recipe HERE.
perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe card
Cookie Images: ONE