blue artichoke

My chocolate chip cookies bring the boys to the yard.

The New York Times claims to have the recipe for the best chocolate chip cookie. No offense to the Times, but I was skeptical, so I did what every chocolate-loving artichoke would do: I pitted the NYT cookie against the Snackdown cookie. With one alteration, I followed the recipes exactly. The NYT cookie calls for special fèves (fancy chocolate chips) or Valrhona chips. Though the article claims that you can get the Valrhona chips at Whole Foods, I went to two and they had no idea what I was talking about. So, for both recipes, I used Ghirardelli dark chocolate chips.

The NYT cookies were beautiful. Take a look.

But the flavor, while wonderful, was not as good as the Snackdown cookies. You'd never know unless you could do a side-by-side comparison, but the NYT was slightly bitter and lighter in flavor than the deep, rich, almost molassesy sweetness of the Snackdown version. So, the NYT was beautiful in appearance and good in flavor and the Snackdown was better in flavor and just OK in appearance. My next batch will fuse the two together, to achieve the best looking and best tasting cookie you could ever imagine. Then, victory will be mine! (In the meantime, I will happily gobble these beautiful giant chocolate chip cookies).

Getting to Know All About You: What's your signature dish/recipe?