The ultimate chocolate chip cookies
We eat chocolate chip cookies in our dreams all day long, preferably when they’re perfectly baked. Then they have a subtly crisp edge, a soft, chewy interior and plenty of deliciously melted chocolate. Want to bake them yourself? These tips will help you succeed.
The chocolate
You always knead chocolate chips through the dough. In case you were planning to finely chop a bar of chocolate because you couldn’t find any chips: don’t. In his baking book Sweet, Ottolenghi explains that when you use chocolate pieces of unequal size, you also run the risk of ending up with misshapen bakes. We don’t want that.
Moreover, always choose dark chocolate chips. Why? You’ll taste the difference between the sweetness of the dough and the bitterness of the chocolate more clearly. Oh yes, and if we’re allowed to be selective, we also choose the very best-quality chips. The higher the quality, the more cocoa and cocoa butter they contain, and the faster the chocolate melts. Nothing is more anticlimactic than unmelted pieces of chocolate in your chip cookie.
The butter
It has to go in, no matter what. But should it be melted, or do you simply knead room-temperature cubes of butter through the dough? In principle, either works. But if you use melted butter, the cookie will spread a little more in the oven. The advantage of melted butter is that, by heating it just a little longer, you can turn it into beurre noisette. The golden-brown butter gives the cookies even more flavor. Thinking of using coconut oil, for example, as a substitute for the butter? Don’t. It makes the cookie hard and far less flavorful. Butter is truly essential for the right flavor.
The sugar
Should you choose granulated sugar, cane sugar or dark brown sugar? Tasty looked into it and discovered that granulated sugar provides the ultimate crispness and firmness, while dark brown sugar gives your cookie a gooey touch. Naturally, we want both; that combination is precisely what makes it so perfect. So we use a mixture of equal parts.
Chilling
As mentioned earlier: this cookie should have crisp edges and still be deliciously soft in the middle. The best way to achieve that is to put the dough in the fridge for a while before it goes into the oven. Chilling also makes the butter in the dough firmer, which prevents your cookie from spreading in the oven.
The shape
Want cookies that are perfectly round and even, and all look alike? Use a small ice cream scoop to place the dough on the baking paper.
Baking
It’s important not to bake the cookies for too long. Always stick to the recipe’s baking time. It may well be that the cookies don’t look completely done yet when the timer tells you to take them out, but take them out anyway. Otherwise, they’ll become less chewy.
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