Friday, April 21, 2017
any time you need em slice and bake chocolate chip cookies
any time you need em slice and bake chocolate chip cookies
For a long time, I thought the New York Times chocolate chip cookie recipe had ruined me for good. Based on a recipe from famed chocolatier Jaques Torres, it makes a cookie SO GOOD that I find myself daydreaming about baking and eating it once a week. And I probably would, if it weren't incredibly, incredibly, incredibly fussy to make. The uses two types of flour and rare (not to mention, expensive!) disk-shaped chocolate chips called feves. And to add insult to injury, it makes you wait at least 24 hours before you can eat it.
So what happens when I just need a chocolate chip cookie right here, right now?
Tara, the incredibly talented blogger behind Seven Spoons, saves the day with her recipe for Basic, Great Chocolate Chip Cookies. The recipe, found in her beautiful cookbook, is pretty much the exact opposite of the New York Times recipe. It's the least fussy thing ever. There's no need for a mixer; heck, you don't even need to bring the butter in the ingredients list to room temperature before using! And even with the incredibly simplified baking process, it produces a chocolate chip cookie that's just as good as the one from the New York Times — crisp on the outside, chewy in the center, and the perfect balance of sweet and salty:
The only problem is that with Erlend all the way over in New York, it's literally just me, my cat, and two dozen incredibly delicious cookies in my apartment. And if you know me in real life (which, shameless plug, follow hummingbirdhigh on Snapchat for a glimpse, though I'll admit I have no idea what I'm doing or how to really use the damn thing), you know that I can plow through 24 chocolate chip cookies in just one sitting. Without even taking a breath. For real.
So in order to prevent myself from gaining 200lbs, you know what I do? I allow myself one on the day that I make the dough, and freeze the rest. After measuring the dough out into cookie dough balls, I unceremoniously stuff them into a square baking pan to basically create a homemade version of the Nestle Tollhouse slice-and-bake cookies from my childhood that I loved, loved, loved. Only this time, with homemade quality dough that doesn't use and any weird preservatives or ingredients.
Plus, the kicker? There's some crazy voodoo cookie dough magic that happens the longer the cookies sit in the freezer. That is, the longer the dough rests (and these babies keep for AGES — I'm still going through a batch that I first made about two months ago), the more flavorful and amazing the cookies will taste. Think: a chocolate chip cookie with strong notes of brown butter, toffee, and salted caramel. It's all there, even though I used none of those ingredients. I don't know how or why. The reigning theory is that the flour fully absorbs all flavored oil from the chocolate, butter, and other ingredients to produce all those new flavors, but honestly, I don't really care.
Because it's that good.
Now if you'll excuse me, writing this post actually made me crave one of these damn things again. I'm pretty sure I have one or two left in the back of my freezer somewhere. And if I don't, no biggie. Thanks to Tara, I'll just whip up another batch, give or take twenty minutes. Just like that.
Life is good.
Some baker's notes:
- Please note that the recipe calls for chocolate feves (that is, round chocolate disks) and NOT chocolate chips. Chocolate chips have some weird edible paraffin wax that helps them keep their shape while baking — we don't want that for these cookies! Chopped chocolate, on the other hand, melts into the cookies and helps infuse the dough with chocolate. This is an especially important quality if you're freezing the dough for an extended amount of time. If you can't find any feves, you can substitute with a bar of good-quality chocolate (if you're on a budget, consider using Trader Joe's Pound Plus bars — they're great quality considering their price). Be sure to chop the chocolate up unevenly and coarsely to create an interesting texture throughout the cookie; I even left some feves whole and it was awesome!
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