Some Tricks for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

Much has already been written on chocolate chip cookies, but it is a subject that will probably never be exhausted, so here are my two cents. I make a cookie that is chewy, but also baked dark enough that there is a nice caramelized flavor and crunchy texture on the sides and bottom. 

I start with Dorie Greenspan's recipe from Baking From My Home to Yours. I would highly recommend that anyone interested in baking buy this book, but you can see the recipe on Amazon in its look inside feature (pg. 68). There is also a great discussion of chocolate chip cookie recipe tricks in this NYTimes article.

Besides following Dorie's recipe to a tee (i.e. paying attention to the temperature of the butter and eggs, preheating the oven, etc.) here are my tricks: 

1. I use the Pound Plus 72% chocolate bar from Trader Joe's. At about $5 for a 17.6 oz bar, this is an amazingly affordable and high-quality chocolate. I chop it with a large knife, angling it so that it creates both big chunks and smaller shavings of chocolate. The shavings create the dark look of the cookies and create an all around chocolate flavor. 
2. I recently started substituting about 1/3 of the chocolate with white chocolate chunks. Trader Joe's has a 3.5 oz white chocolate bar that is another great product. I use one of these and a little more than half of the Pound Plus bar. The white chocolate adds a creamy, sweet flavor to the cookie. 
3. I toast the walnuts in the oven while it is preheating. In pastry school, we were taught never to use nuts in a recipe without first toasting them (no matter what the recipe says). Toasting nuts intensifies their flavor. When chopping the nuts, unlike the chocolate, don't include the "dust" as it will detract from the texture.
4. I use the larger salt amount that Dorie suggests.
5. I chill the dough completely, for at least 2 hours and preferably overnight. This yields a thicker, more consistent shape and prevents over-spreading. Alternatively, I scoop the dough (see next trick) onto a pan and freeze in balls. The frozen dough can be put directly in the oven and will make the best shaped cookies. Having frozen dough ready to bake is also extremely convenient and great in a dessert emergency :). (I will upload pictures next time I do this as the pictures here are of a batch where I ran out of time to do this step fully and the cookies are thus not that round.)
6. I use a scoop to portion the cookies. This creates cookies that are consistent in size and bake round. I drop them from the scoop onto the tray so the flat side is down, then give them a little pat so they look like hockey pucks. I recommend scooping the dough before chilling because it's a lot easier on the wrist.
7. I always use Silpat liners on my trays.  

That's all I have up my sleeve, but feel free to ask me any other questions you may have.

Thank You Cookies and Cakes

All the way across the country, in Buffalo, NY, Paula Carver of idtech2000 helped me create a sitemap of my website. This will help search engines find my site and hopefully bring in lots and lots of business. 

As a small token of my appreciation, I created this gift package yesterday. It includes two lemon pound cakes (of course made with freshly picked California lemons) and a couple of chocolate chunk cookie packages. I packed these up in a flat rate box (thank you USPS for inventing these!) and hopefully everything should arrive intact in Buffalo in 2-3 days. These are both good travelers and keepers, so will still taste fresh upon arrival. Paula, if you're reading this, keep an eye out!

Avocado Green

I remember seeing my first avocado green kitchen when I was about ten. We had a house fire and were searching for a house to rent while the damage on ours was being repaired. We went to look at a house in our town, which apparently hadn’t been remodeled since the 1960s or 1970s. I thought it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen and was shocked that anyone would have ever thought a kitchen should be done in that color. It must have seriously offended my design sensibilities because the image of the kitchen is still ingrained in my memory. (The accompanying stale cigarette smell and shag carpeting led us to rent elsewhere.)
I guess my design sensibilities have evolved since then, because I fell in love with the retro kitchen immediately upon entering my new cottage. It has avocado green laminate floors and avocado green cabinets. Sadly, the avocado green appliances are no longer there (well, perhaps not too sad as I enjoy using my modern oven and fridge).
I’ve changed position so fully on the avocado green matter that I immediately envisioned an avocado green Kitchenaid mixer on my counter. Serendipitously, when I put in a search to Craigslist, one was available at a garage sale the next day. I emailed the woman and had her hold it for me and am now the proud owner of a second Kitchenaid! It was hers as a child in the 1970s and led her to second place in the Girl Scouts Cake Bake Off when she was 9 years old. Now, it looks pretty great in my kitchen and will come in handy when I need extra mixing capacity.

Lemon Meringue Cake

This is the same cake as in my last post, but I’m so in love with it, I thought I’d give it the full attention it deserves.
The cake layers are basic white cake layers from a Cook’s Illustrated recipe. I split each layer into two, so there were a total of four layers. I spread each with a little bit of caramel (confession: store bought from Trader Joe’s) and then with lemon cream.
The lemon cream is a delicious recipe from Dorie Greenspan’s Baking From My Home to Yours. It is similar to a lemon curd, but the butter is not cooked with the other ingredients as in a curd. Instead, it is whipped in at the end, creating a very smooth and light texture. It is quite easy to make and, as I recently discovered, freezes really well. I multiply the recipe several times and freeze pint-sized containers of it for future use. They just need to defrost in the refrigerator overnight and are good to go.
The frosting is a simple meringue that must be applied directly after making and before it starts to stiffen up. It is then torched all over and tastes like roasted marshmallows. (Marshmallows are simply meringue set with gelatin).
I would love to tier this cake for a unique wedding cake. I also would like to experiment with the same frosting applied to a s’mores or rocky road type cake with chocolate layers and caramel, chocolate and graham cracker filling.

Cottage Living

I just moved into the most adorable little cottage and I am thrilled to have my own yard. My last place didn’t have any outdoor space, which was such a waste of the fabulous LA weather. I set-up the breakfast nook as an office so I am using the lawn as my dining room.
I wanted to thank my friends Kathy and Roger for helping me move, so I invited them over for lunch today. On the menu were gazpacho, egg salad sandwiches and a lemon meringue cake. Kathy brought her amazing freshly made lemonade.
I put the gazpacho glasses in the freezer overnight, so they were nice and frosty (for about two minutes until the sun got to them). The recipe was fairly standard with a few bits of bread added to give it a little creaminess before it was blended.

 The egg salad was very classic, with just mayonnaise, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, shallots, parsley, salt and pepper. I served it with sourdough toast.

 The lemon meringue cake was fun to make--I always have fun with the blow torch. It was four layers of white cake spread with a little bit of caramel and lemon cream then frosted with the meringue and torched. I like how it looks a little crazy. It would be good for an Alice in Wonderland tea party. I have also made this as mini cupcakes in the past (see my cake gallery).