New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie Modification

A few weeks ago, the New York Times published an article about the Quest for the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie. Accompanying it was a recipe for a cookie that was intriguing on a few counts.

• you were supposed to let the dough chill for 36 hours before making cookies from it
• you were supposed to use chocolate disks instead of chips

• the cookies were GIGANTIC

After making them, I found that they were as delicious as advertised, though I think I accidentally found a modification that makes them even better.

For starters, this might be a good time to buy a cooking scale if you don’t have one already and use it when measuring flour, so you can be more accurate with measuring flour and brown sugar.

I had to go to Whole Foods to buy the chocolate disks the recipe called for: enough to make half a batch.

At the urging of my wife, I ended up making a whole batch, so to make up for the lack of chocolate disks, I took part of a Trader Joe’s “Pound Plus” bittersweet chocolate bar and roughly chopped it up into chunks ranging in size from tiny crumbs to large peas with some pieces approaching small grapes.

I then made two batches: one with chunks, one with disks.

I made the cookies over the course of a couple of days and made them in various sizes from the obscenely huge 3.5 ounce beasts the recipe calls for to some attempts at more demure 1.5-2.5 ouncers. We liked the larger size cookies the best. We just had to get used to the idea that we had to share our cookies.

In the end, after a few days of baking and giving away chocolate chip cookies, the batch with the chunks was deemed the winner. We loved the way the small crumbs of chocolate that are a by-product of coarsely chopping chocolate spread throughout the dough, and we also found that a big chunk of chocolate was much more satisfying to bite into than a thin chocolate disk.

Next up, I’m intrigued to now try other cookie recipes using this 36 hour chilling technique. It might work well for my mother-in-law’s ökensand/drömmar recipe which are a dry shortbread style dough.

Wednesday August 6, 2008