Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies: Part 1

So the bf and I started on our aforementioned quest yesterday. We essentially took over his family's kitchen to make just cookies. Our lunch was pretty much cookies and some milk, which was perfectly fine by me. And because I was half joking/half serious, I made a whole lab report for our escapades.

Objective: To find the formulation for perfect chocolate cookies - dense, good toffee/caramel flavor, large pockets of chocolate, good salty/sweet balance, crispy on the edges and gooey/chewy in the middle, with good depth of flavor

Materials: Private selection semisweet chocolate chips, 8 oz semisweet chocolate bars chopped into small chunks, all purpose flour, vanilla extract, unsalted butter, baking soda, salt, sea salt for sprinkling, dark brown sugar, granulated sugar

Methods:
1) Follow the recipe in Recipe from Super Detailed Article to the tee
2) Make any adjustments
3) Eat all the cookies

Observations and Results:

Trial One: Following the recipe

• The cookies spread a lot in the oven and turned out a wonderful nutty, caramelized brown. 
• Because they spread a lot, they ended up being wide, flatter cookies that were dense but not as thick as we would have liked
• The flavor was pretty good, but we might have chopped the chunks too small because we didn't get the large pockets of chocolate that we wanted
• The tops of the cookies were pretty smooth, instead of slightly irregular which is what we wanted but hey, smooth cookies are fine as long as they taste great anyways

Alright, so why did they turn out so flat and wide? I think its' because when browning the butter, I did a pretty good job, which is why the cookies have that wonderful caramel color. However, when cooling the browned butter, I didn't cool it enough. The butter was cooled down enough when added to the egg/white sugar/vanilla mixture but it wasn't yet solid enough. I had added the ice cube, popped it into the fridge, and whisked the browned butter over ice bath before adding it,  but it wasn't quite cooled enough yet. This caused the dough to be more slack and caused more cookie spread in the oven. 

Trial Two: More solid butter, different chocolate

So when we went to Krogers for baking provisions, my boyfriend wanted the Kroger brand Private Selections semi sweet chocolate chips. What a great choice. We wanted to use chocolate chips for this trial because we were hoping we'd get the large chocolate pockets we didn't get in Trial One. When we opened the chocolate chip bag, we expected regular size chips - NOPE. They were HUGE, essentially chips the size of large, 0.5 inch chunks. So honestly, if you can't find chocolate chips that big, just chop your semisweet chocolate bar into larger chunks, which we might try and do again next time. We just liked the chips because they're more like the traditional chocolate chip cookie. Here's how the second batch turned out.

• This time when I made the browned butter, I decided it wasn't browned enough after I had added the ice cube so I put it back in the pan and browned it more. Then I whisked the browned butter over ice bath the whole time instead of just putting it into the fridge. I whisked it constantly until the whole solution turned opaque and it seemed to be like a soft butter paste.
• However, I didn't brown the butter as much for this trial so that's why the cookies aren't as caramel brown as the first batch 

The result: Because the browned butter was so much more solid (consistency of soft spreadable margarine), the dough was also more solid, less sticky, and the cookies spread less in the oven. This led to -
  ~ Taller, thicker cookies
  ~  Smaller diameter cookies because of less spread
  ~ Really gooey pockets because of those huge chocolate chips

Conclusion:

We both liked the Trial 2 cookies more, because we liked the gooey-ness and the thicker cookies.

On the left, Trial One; On the right, Trial Two

However, the methods weren't as consistent as I would've liked because the butter wasn't browned enough in Trial Two. But hey, that's life, improv is the spice of life in the kitchen. Despite the fact that we made some killer chocolate chip cookies, we both agreed that we hadn't reached perfection yet. Due to travel limitations, we weren't able to rest the dough over night. But in a few weeks, we're going to be able to try resting the dough in the fridge for 2-3 days and then baking to compare flavors. In the mean time, we ended up with two batches of 28 cookies each, so we've got ourselves happily occupied until we can try the next trials.

Nothing is better than a full counter and the smell of baked goods. To be continued...

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies: A Quest

I am definitely a "foodie." Yes, I'm one of those pretentious people that are perpetually on the hunt for the best restaurants and cuisines, who are giddy at the season's first sight of Meyer lemons at the farmer's market, who have a comment about everything they've ever eaten, and who love food not just for its sustenance, but because we acknowledge how it can be sublime, an art, a representation of culture, a common bond and glue between people, and how tastes can constantly change, mirroring how we change also. It can definitely be a pretentious (and expensive) hobby, but I love it.

My boyfriend loves that I'm a foodie also. Although he has more of a love-hate relationship with it, choosing to find my obsession with food humorous (like I find his shopping obsession hilarious, so hey its a fair trade). He doesn't really view food in the same euphoric, voraciously curious way that I do, but we can both agree on something that we love - chocolate chip cookies.

At the university we go to, there are legends of famous "Sbisa cookies," named after the dining hall they were cooked in. In my first semester of freshman year, these cookies were served every night. When we saw the trays being pulled out, all the students flocked and immediately lined up to get one, two, three, or even six of these fresh out the oven, gooey, warm chocolate chip cookies. They were amazing, so amazing that there's even a facebook group devoted to tracking when Sbisa cookies were served. The next semester, the cookies weren't seen again. I think my soul aches for those delicious, buttery, gooey, warm, perfectly salty-sweet and richly chocolate cookies. So while thinking of things to do over winter break and while simultaneously mourning the loss of Sbisa cookies, my boyfriend and I came up with a great idea - perfecting chocolate chip cookies.

Now even before we came up with this great way to spend time together, I had seen several articles about the science behind chocolate chip cookies. My interest in cooking and baking started in high school and has only intensified since. That passion, combined with my strong background in the sciences and taking a Fundamentals of Baking class (science/chemistry based), makes understanding the processes of cooking so appealing to me. Here are some great, in depth links to articles/videos that I (easily) found:

• This is a great, simple and well explained TED video about the basics of what happens to a cookies during baking. I love the art style and how they describe the chemistry of how a cookie is made. Because as all cooks and bakers know, its not just the ingredients you use that determine how the end product tastes. Its the techniques you use to cook and prepare food that matters above all. 

• This article includes links to the video above and another article that is listed below this link. This specific article is great at concisely summarizing the affects of each ingredient on the final cookie. For more in depth explanation, check out the bottom link.

 Concise Summary of Ingredient Effect in Cookies

• Super in depth analysis of using different sugars, different flours, different ingredient amounts, different baking times and temperatures, resting the dough overnight/several days and influencing the flavor profile of the cookie. I love how wonderfully detailed and obsessive the article is - perfect advice for tweaking any recipe to suit your own tastes.

Super In Depth Analysis of Cookie Science

My boyfriend and I are probably going to attempt our best at our version of perfect chocolate chip cookies next week. We'll see how it goes! I'll be posting results.