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?

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 06:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

28 dozen cookies
16 tasters
7 recipes
1 winner

The competition was fierce. Every recipe received a bid for top three. One recipe, however, received five bids for first place and two bids for second place, making it the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Here it is:

Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cook’s Illustrated 1/1996

These truly chewy chocolate chip cookies are delicious served warm from the oven or cooled. To ensure a chewy texture, leave the cookies on the cookie sheet to cool. You can substitute white, milk chocolate, or peanut butter chips for the semi- or bittersweet chips called for in the recipe. In addition to chips, you can flavor the dough with one cup of nuts, raisins, or shredded coconut.

Makes 1 1/2 dozen 3-inch cookies
2 1/8 cups bleached all-purpose flour (2 cups plus 2 tablespoons)
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled slightly
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips or chunks (semi or bittersweet)

1. Heat oven to 325 degrees. Adjust oven racks to upper- and lower-middle positions. Mix flour, salt, and baking soda together in medium bowl; set aside.

2. Either by hand or with electric mixer, mix butter and sugars until thoroughly blended. Mix in egg, yolk, and vanilla. Add dry ingredients; mix until just combined. Stir in chips.

3. Form scant 1/4 cup dough into ball. Holding dough ball using fingertips of both hands, pull into two equal halves. Rotate halves ninety degrees and, with jagged surfaces exposed, join halves together at their base, again forming a single cookie, being careful not to smooth dough’s uneven surface. Place formed dough onto one of two parchment paper-lined 20-by-14-inch lipless cookie sheets, about nine dough balls per sheet. Smaller cookie sheets can be used, but fewer cookies can be baked at one time and baking time may need to be adjusted. (Dough can be refrigerated up to 2 days or frozen up to 1 month—shaped or not.)

4. Bake, reversing cookie sheets’ positions halfway through baking, until cookies are light golden brown and outer edges start to harden yet centers are still soft and puffy, 15 to 18 minutes (start checking at 13 minutes). (Frozen dough requires an extra 1 to 2 minutes baking time.) Cool cookies on cookie sheets. Serve or store in airtight container.

Taster’s comments:
“Most appealing appearance. Best blend of crispy initial bite followed by chewiness. Sweet, but not too sweet.” – Green Mango Custard

“Excellent combo of chewy and crunchy. Good ratio of chocolate to cookie.” – Blue Salmon

The second place cookie had dark chocolate chips and many tasters suggested using the dark chocolate chips in the first place cookie. The third place cookie had three times the amount of vanilla as the other cookies. Looks like I need to play around with the winning recipe, trying different kinds of chocolate and increasing the amount of vanilla. But it’s pretty damn good on its own.

Overheard at the Snackdown party:
“Pants and cookies don’t mix. It’s a well-known fact” – Blue Sushi

“No one really cooks with horse sweat anymore.” -- Blue Sushi

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 05:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's Munch Madness time in Missouri!
The cookies were made last night and have been anxiously training for the big tournament this afternoon. Who will emerge victor? Which cookie has what it takes to be crowned the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie?

Winner will be announced tomorrow.

Here's a copy of the invitation.

The Ultimate Snackdown Chocolate Chip Cookie Party

20+ cookie recipes entered Munch Madness.
The Sweet 7 remain.
You can help choose the champion.

Bring your sweet tooth.

Saturday, January 28
3:00 p.m.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

OK, folks, we started with 21 cookie recipes and have whittled the competition down to the Sweet Seven: batches #1, 4, 7, 8B, 10, 17 & 20. Batch #9, though a favorite, was disqualified for testing positive for a special ingredient (molasses), so will compete in Ultimate Snackdown Chocolate Chip Cookie Category 3 (Special Ingredients). Recipe #14 will also compete in Category 3, as it has a basic cookie recipe (which failed to qualify in Category 1) with several variations that will be put to the test in Category 3.

I'm planning to make all Sweet Seven recipes at once, for an equal and fair comparison. When that will be is still to be determined. When do I have a big block of time with nothing better to do?

We here at the Ultimate Snackdown show no mercy to losers. All recipes that failed to qualify have been deleted from the JumpDrive, purged from the recycle bin and all paper copies have been shredded. Failure is final.

Dinner tonight: chocolate chip pancakes, cheesy eggs and fake sausage. Breakfast is the new dinner.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 06:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At last! The qualifying round for the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie (Plain) is over! I made the last two recipes yesterday.

Batch #20 "Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies"
Recipe from Southern Living. These are excellent cookies. I baked one sheet for the minimum time and the other at the maximum time. I prefer the shorter-cooking ones. Gentleman Caller prefers the longer-cooking ones. We both agree that these cookies deserve to go to the next round. The cookies were puffy and didn't spread out very much. Both batches had a bit of a crunch and a chewy inside. Good stuff, these cookies.

Batch #21 "Lauren's Chocolate Chip Cookies"
I don't know who Lauren is, but she makes an awful cookie. I have no idea how her recipe got published in Cooking Light. This recipe had all sorts of deviations from a traditional recipe. For example, no butter. What? Lauren uses canola oil, corn syrup and egg whites. She also uses half regular all-purpose flour and half whole wheat pastry flour. And, the real travesty, she uses grain-sweetened chocolate chips (Sunspire brand). Have you ever had these? They're gross. And they make the cookies gross. Seriously, I spit out the first one, still warm from the oven. Surprisingly, the cookies are a bit better the next day, but not so good that I would want to serve them to anyone. Including myself.

So, that wraps up the qualifying round. I'll have to tally the scores and I'll post the finalists tomorrow.

Dinner tonight: beef and wild rice soup with winter vegetables.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

First of all, I'd like to say that I lied. We had peas for dinner last night, not broccoli.
Sorry, dear Internet, but I'll lie to you from time to time. I always come clean in the end.

Now that's out of the way, more cookie reports!

Batch #17 "Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies"
Recipe from Southern Living. This recipe includes both semisweet and milk chocolate chips, though not equal amounts (twice as much semisweet). The batter was unusually dense and sticky, but the resulting cookie was aesthetically pleasing. Light golden brown and chunky. The texture was soft and chewy with a bit of a crunch. Flavor was super-good. I'm sending this one to the next round.

Batch #18 "Good-For-You Chocolate-Chip Cookies"
Recipe from Cooking Light. Ingredients included half all-purpose flour and half whole-wheat flour, applesauce and reduced-fat chocolate chips. I used regular chocolate chips because I couldn't find reduced fat, and even if I had found them, I'm opposed to reduced-fat chocolate. There are no bad chocolate chip cookies, but these are by far the worst of the ones I've made, mostly because of the sorry chocolate-chip-to-cookie ratio. Sorely lacking in chocolate flavor. The whole-wheat flour added a slightly nutty flavor, which I kind of like. The color was light brown and the texture was puffy and soft. Chocolate chip cookies aren't supposed to be good for you. Broccoloons are good for you, and no one likes broccoloons, do they?

Batch #19 "Puffed-Up Chocolate-Chip Cookies"
Recipe from Cooking Light. The ingredient list calls for applesauce in place of some of the butter. The batter was quite runny, grossly so. Because the butter and applesauce are mixed together, the butter never gets creamy. Instead the butter was in very small chunks throughout the batter. The cookie was light brown and puffy with a light, spongy texture. I actually found the texture a bit disconcerting. They would, however, probably be excellent dunked in a glass of milk. Update 11.20.05: Cookies have developed an odd sheen about them, as if they are exuding moisture. A sweaty sheen. Yuk.

Dinner tonight: Grilled pork chops with port-fig sauce and pecans with roasted butternut squash salad
Update 11.20.05: Another lie. No port-fig sauce with pecans. Instead, pork chops with garlic relish. These lies are going to tear us apart.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It is 7 p.m. and I have no idea what we're having for dinner tonight. There are one zillion and seven things that need my attention right now and my brain is too jittery to concentrate on dinner.

Hey, yesterday I made the beef jerky of chocolate chip cookies! Usually I like to make two batches at a time, for comparison purposes, but I was distracted yesterday too.

Batch #16 "Chewy Chocolate-Chip Cookies"
Recipe is from Cooking Light and by far the healthiest of the cookies I've made. The recipe uses 1 Tablespoon of butter. One! Two egg whites. And a bit less than ¾ c. of sugar (brown and white combined). These low-fat cookies take longer to make because you have to beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form, which for some reason, took an exceptionally long time yesterday. The texture after folding in the rest of the ingredients is difficult to describe. It is sort of like thick marshmallow fluff. Very thick and sticky. The cookies look good, keep their shape, are light golden brown and taste good. But have a funky texture. When warm, they have a crunchy shell and gooey, chewy inside. After a day, they are really chewy and pliant, like beef jerky. This cookie doesn't make it to the next round, but is a good option for those who want a tasty lower fat alternative and don't mind sacrificing a bit in the texture department.

I went to the mall today. Mistake. Malls are some sort of alternate reality. Oh, sure, I used to hang out at the mall a lot in high school; I even worked in an ice cream shop at the mall. But now malls freak me out. I felt like everyone was looking at me, because everyone was looking at me. I actually checked to make sure I wasn’t still wearing my pjs. All buttons buttoned and zippers zipped. Hair brushed. Nothing unusual. I suppose it is possible I looked extraordinarily attractive today, but I doubt it. Creepy. I couldn’t even find what I was looking for. So I went to the grocery store to calm myself down. People are too busy consulting shopping lists and squeezing the tomatoes to pay attention to me in the grocery store.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 07:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I looked at all the cookies, three cooling racks worth, and felt ill. I had already tasted several from each batch, made careful notes and determined which ones would advance to the next round. But still I had almost five dozen cookies left. I put them into ziplock bags, labeled each bag and put the bags into a bubblewrap-lined box. I taped up the box and the nausea vanished. Out of sight, out of mind. I went on about my business, until Gentleman Caller returned home with a friend, back from a show and a few drinks, with his tooth set for some cookies. "Where are they?" "Gone. They left." I untaped the box and let GC and friend sample the cookies. When they were sated, I retapted the box and applied an address label. Early the next morning, I mailed the box to the Cookie Disposal Service, otherwise known as Red Momo.

What follows is a partial transcript of the review:

“As for me, I would have to say that 8B was my favourite. It covered all the cookie prerequisites, and while not necessarily the world's best (I think there might be better ones and I look forward to them). 9B was actually good, too. I enjoyed it, even with its crispiness. I did realise, however, that I craved different cookies throughout the day. Sometimes I wanted the less-baked and other times I wanted the crisp.

Anyway, I can also report on transportation issues. 8A was crumbs. 8B was crumbly but some major cookie-sized chunks still made it. 9A, about the same. 9B and 8C were perfectly cookie shaped. Definitely those when long-distances are in order.”
--Red Momo
______

8A - Not my favorite
8B - Good but a little crunchy
8C - Too crunchy but good taste
9A - Too sweet and crumbly
9B - Nice and soft but not my favorite taste.

I think 8C was the best taste but 9B was the best as far as texture goes.

Thanks for sharing!!

-- Purple Chicken & Bacon BBQ Pizza on Thin Crust
________________

The consistency is very important. 9A wasn't too soft like 8A, or oily like 9B, and it also wasn't to crumby like 8B or flaky like 8C. The taste of the dough was not too rich, which is important since the chocolate chips are rich, and by god we don't want an over-bombardment of richness.

-- Blue Cheddar
________________

I can taste the baking soda in 8A.

-- Green Green Chili
________________

My favorite was batch 8A. I think with the molasses, batch 9 is a little too sweet, and I really like them chewy, so 8A is my favorite

-- Blue Peanut Butter Cup
________________

For the flavor, I liked the 8B, even though I prefer a crispier cookie.

-- Blue Cabbage Roll
________________

8B is my favorite.

-- Pink Ribeye

Big thanks to Red Momo and his tasting team.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made three batches of cookies for Saturday night poker:
Batch #10 “Thick and Chew Chocolate Chip Cookies”
This recipe is from Cook’s Illustrated. There is nothing unusual about the cookies except for the exceptional chewy goodness. The cookies are baked on parchment paper. The cookies are big, moist and chewy. The color isn’t very deep, but the flavor more than makes up for the lack of color. The recipe calls for you to make balls with the dough, ~ ¼ c. per cookie, then pull the ball in half and press together the rounded edges, leaving the rough, separated edges on the outside. I don’t know how this technique contributes to the final outcome, but the result is great. I’m sending it to the next round. This one was preferred by the poker players, even though chocolate chip cookies don’t match up very well with beer or Scotch.

Batch #11 “Thin, Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies”
Also from Cook’s Illustrated. This recipe uses milk and light corn syrup, ingredients not common to chocolate chip cookies. It requires a stand mixer, but few mixing bowls. Definitely a plus in a kitchen where the cook is also the dishwasher. The cookies are really thin; they spread out a lot, melding together to form a few jumbo cookies. The flavor is sweeter than I like, but still pretty good. The cookie, though thin, isn't particularly crispy. It's very chewy, which I like, but too thin. Gentleman Caller likes the thin cookies, but says these aren’t as good as some of the earlier ones. This recipe gets tossed out.

Batch #12 “Old-Fashioned Chocolate Chip Cookies”
Recipe from Bon Appétit. It calls for equal parts vegetable shortening (Crisco) and butter, so the cookie holds its shape well. Perhaps too well. The cookies are thick and almost shortbready, but not quite. They are pretty light in color. One poker player brought up an excellent point, though, and that was that for milk-dunking purposes, batches 10 and 11 won't cut it. Only this batch is thick enough to soak up enough milk. This criteria adds a new wrinkle to the competition. However, though it excels in dunkability, it is an unimpressive cookie in all other areas of comparison. So, a bit reluctantly, this is another for the recipe wasteland.

Moving right along! I had gotten a bit burned out on chocolate chip cookies after the batches last weekend, but the plethora of pumpkin cheesecakes in the meantime gave my palate a break. There has been some serious lobbying to have the molasses chocolate chip cookies moved to the “special ingredients” category because the molasses makes it unfair for the other plain chocolate chip cookies. After much deliberation and heated testimony, I have agreed to eliminate Batch #9 from the plain chocolate chip category.

With this, I have crossed the halfway mark. Ten more recipes to go. At this point, it seems to be never ending. I dream about baking cookies.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gentleman Caller is out getting raunchy with the boys and I'm sitting home on a Friday night, hanging out with my blog. It is just as it should be. The blog never makes me listen to loud music and feel awkward for not dancing in a crowd of hippies. I don't even have to dress up or put on makeup. That's why we're such good friends.

Since my last post, about an hour ago and yesterday, I have been looking through the rest of my chocolate chip cookie recipes and have been able to weed out several. One I had tried long ago and written an unfavorable review. The recipe used a cake mix and I thought the cookies were too cakey and had a sharp texture that was painful. Felt "grating... like sandpaper against the roof of my mouth," I noted. Painful cookies, I think, can be eliminated without further review. Another recipe explicitly specified margarine. I never use margarine, so I never have it on hand. It also called for "butter flavoring." What's that? Why not just use butter? One very important quality of the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie is that I can usually find all of the necessary ingredients in my cupboards. And, finally, I realized there were a few duplicate recipes, with different names. For example, the recipe on the bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips (Batch #4, my favorite so far) is the same recipe as the one on the package of Tollhouse chocolate chips! Sneaky. But I'm wise to the ruse.

I've also decided to categorize the recipes and pick a winner in each category. The categories are: plain chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, and chocolate chip cookies with other additions (cranberries, cocoa, specialty nuts, etc.) These categories are necessary. I've learned from reading reader reviews on some cooking magazine websites that oatmeal emphatically does not belong in a chocolate chip cookie. I, myself, quite enjoy oats in my cookie, but can see why purists oppose such an addition. I've tested 9 of the plain chocolate chip recipes; I have 11 to go. Then on to Round Two.

I should be tracking how much weight I'm probably gaining.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 12:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I made two more batches of cookies today, but there was so much variation in the resulting cookies because of cooking times that it is more like five batches of cookies. It is so difficult to pick a favorite. Gentleman Caller and I keep sampling cookies. We must be fair to the cookies.

Batch #8 "Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies"
This recipe came off the butter flavor Crisco packaging. It differs from the other recipes by using all Crisco (of course) and no butter. It also calls for milk. The recipe gives a range of baking times: 8-10 minutes for chewy cookies or 11-13 minutes for crisp cookies. Also, instead of cooling on racks, the recipe specified cooling the cookies on a sheet of aluminum foil on the kitchen counter. I disobeyed and cooled them on foil on the dining room table. Whoops.
Batch 8A: Cooked for exactly 8 minutes. Looked slightly underdone, very light color. Cookies kept their shape. Gooey when warm, soft and chewy when cooled. Good flavor.
Batch 8B: Cooked exactly 10 1/2 minutes. Lightly browned and cracked/pitted tops. Also kept their shape. Little bit crispy, but also soft and chewy. Good flavor. Gentleman Caller called this the "Jack-of-all-trades of cookies" because it appeals to those who like soft and chewy and those that like crispy. I liked this one best of the three Batch #8 varieties, and enough to send to the next round.
Batch 8C: Cooked exactly 13 minutes. Golden brown with a smooth surface. These cookies also kept their shape nicely. Both crispy and chewy. Good flavor. This was Gentleman Caller's favorite of the Batch #8 cookies.

Batch #9 "White House Chocolate Chip Cookies"
This recipe came from a cookbook called Dessert University, written by the White House executive pastry chef. I don't own the book, so I'm not sure where I originally came across the recipe. It specifies use of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. I have one, so that's no problem. But a hand mixer would do just as well. Once the batter has been mixed, you have to refrigerate the dough for an hour. You can freeze the dough at this point, for as long as one month. I refrigerated it for an hour, on the dot. The unique ingredient in this recipe is molasses. Ah, molasses. I had already started mixing and combining ingredients when I discovered I had no more molasses. Aack. Dedicated to the Snackdown, I changed out of my pajamas and went to the grocery store, totally abandoning my plan to remain pj-clad all day long. I hope you appreciate the sacrifices I make for my self-imposed cookie conquest. Molasses in hand, I resumed the snackdown. After mixing and refrigerating, the batter had to be shaped and flattened by hand into the proper cookie shape. I baked one tray for 8 minutes (the minimum time) and one for 10 minutes (maximum amount of time). Again, with very different results. What a difference two minutes makes.
Batch 9A: Cooked 8 minutes. Looks exactly like a cookie should. Golden brown color with a slightly darker middle where the chocolate chips melted and spread out a bit. The cookie kept its shape and the molasses flavor is very distinctive. Gentleman Caller thought it was interesting, in a good way, and liked it enough to add to his top three favorites so far.
Batch 9B: Cooked 10 minutes. Dark golden brown, a little too dark in the way that looks like I forgot about them in the oven and remembered just as they were on the brink of burning. Crispy texture; molasses flavor, interestingly, is not very apparent.

So far, GC has picked Batches 1, 7 & 9A to move to the next round. I have picked Batches 4 & 8B. Batches 2, 3, 5 & 6 are losers.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 10:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I never realized how many phrases there are about cookies. Weird.

Anyway, I made two more batches on Friday:

Batch #6 "Cakey Chocolate Chip Cookies"
Recipe from Martha Stewart. Edges are thin, crisp and brown. The middle is thick, cakey and white. The flavor is good and sweet and the texture is light. I followed the recipe exactly and used my stand mixer and lined the cookie sheets with parchment paper. I'm sure you could use a hand mixer and a bare cookie sheet, but being a Martha recipe, I'm not surprised that you need extra tools. Gentleman Caller said the flavor is good, "but it's not a cookie." Another taster thought this cookie was better as a "breakfast application."

Batch #7 "Thin-and-Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies"
This recipe makes a lot of cookies, and uses only one bowl. For that, it gets extra points. The cookies are very thin, crispy and crunchy with a nice brown color. Have you ever read The Little Prince? These cookies remind me of the drawing in the book of a hat, or a snake who just ate an elephant, however you look at it. The cookies flattened out so much that the chocolate chips really stand out. There is a nice ratio of chocolate chips to cookie. This is tied with batch #1 for GC's favorite.

Also on Friday, while I had my stand mixer out (limited counter space does not allow the mixer to live on the counter), I made some pizza dough. The recipe made enough dough for two crusts. It was super easy and the crusts were awesome. I questioned their awesomeness until I ate a slice. Yum. The crust was thin and crispy, but sturdy enough to hold all of the toppings without flopping down in the center. First pizza was topped with garlic sauce, zucchini, red pepper, caramelized onion, Parmesan cheese and cheddar. Second pizza was topped with leftover bbq pork, potatoes, corn and a pizza blend of cheese.

Cookies and pizza. Man, that's livin' large.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 09:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Who are the lucky ducks that get to be my tasters? I wish I could say I have a highly organized panel of chocolate chip cookie experts. Instead, the tasters are whoever happens to come into my house when there are some cookies around. I’ve taken some to the office staff at my dentist’s office and sent some to work with Gentleman Caller. I enlisted yard sale shoppers as tasters. Soon I’ll start distributing cookies to the local homeless community. Any suggestions of where to dispose of extraneous cookies?

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 08:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I have tried to control as much as possible the various aspects of this cookie quest. I bought a giant bag of semisweet chocolate chips and jug o' vanilla extract at Sam's. I use the same kind of flour (Wal-Mart brand all-purpose white flour), unless otherwise noted. I use the same baking soda and powder (whatever is in my cupboard). I have used different brands of eggs, but all are large eggs. I use light brown sugar unless otherwise directed. I use the same brand of unsalted butter, which is good because water and salt content vary by brand. I just ran out of light brown sugar, so I'll replenish it using the same brand. I keep the chocolate chips in the fridge, so they are cold for every batch of cookies.

I use my regular cookie sheets as is, unless directed to use Silpat or parchment paper. My cookie sheets aren't nonstick, but I've never had a problem with anything sticking to them.

And I follow the recipes faithfully, which is more difficult than I thought it would be. I like to add more or less of an ingredient or go by how the batter looks and adjust accordingly. One of the batters looked too runny to me. Usually I would add flour, but I refrained and the cookies turned out fine.

Some of the recipes I've tried call for nuts or other additions. I omitted them because I want the best plain chocolate chip cookie. I do like nuts in cookies, but I'll experiment with add-ins after I narrow down the cookie contenders.

I'm learning that the ingredients make big differences. For example, using butter leads to cookies that spread; Crisco helps cookies keep their shape. Brown sugar has more moisture than white sugar and means chewier cookies. Most recipes call for brown sugar and white sugar in various ratios. I'm still working out the perfect ratio for chewiness and sweetness. Only ~35 more recipes to test!

I wonder when I'll burn out on chocolate chip cookies?

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I have embarked upon the most noble of quests: the perfect chocolate chip cookie. As I might have mentioned (it's been so long, who can know for sure?), I have +/-40 chocolate chip cookie recipes. That is entirely too many. All I need is one recipe for the perfect cookie. To date, I have made 5 batches of cookies and I'm quickly realizing that "perfect" is subjective. I know that there is no bad cookie (except perhaps for broccoloons), but tastes vary widely as to the perfect taste, texture and appearance. Personally, I like a nicely browned chewy cookie that is not too sweet. Gentleman Caller, however, likes thin sweet crunchy cookies. I won't say that he is wrong, but definitely misguided.

Here's the lowdown so far:

Batch #1 "Best Chocolate Chip Cookies"
Spread out considerably; flat cookies, yet soft and not too crunchy. Really sweet. GC's favorite so far. Too sweet and flat for me. I like a cookie with curves.

Batch #2 "Basic Chocolate Chip Cookies"
Undercooked at recommended cooking time. Cooked almost twice as long as directed, still pale with very little color. I cooked one tray on Silpat and these browned at the edges. Kept shape nicely, very plump. Soft cookies. Not sweet.

Batch #3 "Gourmet Chocolate Chip Cookies"
Recipe from Gourmet magazine. Nice color. Spread out a lot; very thin cookies. Sweetness just right. Would be perfect if cookies held shape better.

Batch #4 "Ghirardelli Chocolate Chip Cookies"
Recipe from bag of Ghirardelli chocolate chips. Good color. A little crunch at the edges, but chewy in the middle. Good ratio of chocolate chips to cookie. My favorite cookie so far.

Batch #5 "Chocolate Chip Cookies"
Recipe source unknown, which is a shame because I'd like to ridicule the creator. This recipe uses no egg, which is unusual, but might be handy for someone with egg allergies or who doesn't keep eggs on hand. I am neither of these people. These cookies are a bitch to make. After making the dough, you press it into a disk, wrap it in plastic and refrigerate it for one hour to one day. That's not so bad. Sometimes I can wait that long for hot chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven. Sometimes. But, after refrigerating, you need to roll out the dough to a 1/4" thickness and use a 2" round cookie cutter to cut out the cookies. Ugh. The mention of a rolling pin makes Chips Ahoy seem like a good alternative. The dough gets soft quickly, so you have to wrap it back up and refrigerate it for another half hour or so. But, are all the results worth it? No way. The cookies were really light in color, had a crumbly/crunchy texture and were lacking in flavor. Gentleman Caller liked the texture but agreed that something was missing flavor-wise. This recipe goes directly into the trashcan. (I did finally get to use my new rolling pin and rolling pin bands, and one of my round cookie cutters. For that, I am appreciative).

So, that's the progress so far.

Tomorrow I'll let you in on the methodology and the lessons I've learned so far.

Update 10.14.05: I sent batches #4 and #5 to Gentleman Caller's office and received some feedback today. One colleague, an "old guy who's had a million cookies and is looking for something unusual or different," prefered cookie #5. Another was undecided, saying, "The shortbread style cookie seems more refined in style, which I would love to have with tea, not so much a "milk and cookies" style cookie" (about batch #5) and "[Batch #4] is truly a comfort food and I would have a hankerin' for that with a big glass-o-moo." Most other colleagues preferred the more traditional batch #4. So do I.

Posted by Blue Artichoke at 09:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)