Chocolate Chip Cookies
December 16, 2022
This is a simple chocolate chip recipe, but there are some simple improvements I got from the Serious Eats cookie article that make the cookies a little fancier. The pefect chocolate chip cookie for me has a crispy crunch on the bottom and still is a tiny bit soft and chewy on top. These steps are all optional but can make the difference between a good and a great cookie. The
- Chop the chocolate roughly to give it interesting texture.
- Brown the butter on the stove and chill it before incorporating it into your dough.
- Whip the white sugar, vanilla, and egg together before mixing in the rest of the ingredients roughly.
- Rest the dough after you’ve mixed it. Serious Eats claims the optimal time is 3 days, but sometimes you can’t wait that long.
If you want a simpler recipe you can simply combine all the ingredients and mix them and make cookies.
Ingredients
- 112 g butter
- 150 g all-purpose flour
- 3 g (1/2 tsp) baking soda
- 1 g (1/2 tsp) salt
- 55 g white sugar
- 115 g brown sugar
- 1 (50 g) egg
- 4 g (1 tsp) vanilla
- 112 g dark chocolate
- 1 g (1/4 tsp) ground cinnamon, cardamom, or allspice
- flaky sea salt to top
Equipment
- Baking Sheet
- Hand Mixer
- Saucepan
Instructions
- Brown the butter on the stove by melting it in a saucepan for about 5 minutes. When it is done stir in one small ice cube and chill in the fridge for 15 minutes.
- Whip the white sugar, vanilla, and egg in a mixing bowl using a hand mixer until it reaches stiff peaks. This can take between 5 and 10 minutes depending on your mixer.
- Add in the butter and brown sugar and combine roughly with a spoon.
- Mix in remaining dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt) and stir or mix on low until the mixture reaches a dough consistency with no visible dry powder. Add the chocolate and mix loosely.
- Chill the dough for about 1 hour.
- Shape the dough into balls to be baked, about 30 g per cookie. This is another optional step but I find this to be really valuable, especially if I am not making the entire batch of cookies at once. If you pre-portion the cookies it saves a step later and it can be really easy like the "break and bake" cookies you find at the grocery store.
- Rest the dough for up to 3 days in the fridge.
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
- Drop the cookie balls directly from the fridge onto the baking sheet. You can use parchment paper to make the cleanup easier. Bake for 14 minutes.
- Remove the cookie sheet from the oven and top with flaky sea salt (like Maldon's). Allow to rest for 2 minutes before transfering to a wire rack to cool completely.
Written by Will Chiong who lives and works in New York building useful things.