That's no moon... And by moon I mean cookie.

I’m usually a bit picky when it comes to cookies. I think I’ve established this in the past, but that doesn’t make me want to repeat it any less: Chocolate chip is the way to go. I don’t know what odd devil possessed me this time–maybe some kind of herbaceous, vegetable based, more health conscience devil. I had all this rhubarb that I had to use… but I wanted cookies. Clearly the only thing to do was to combine them. Hey, now, you promised not to get mad.

Fortunately, the chunks of nuts, dried cranberries, and bits of rhubarb came together surprisingly well. The nutmeg in the mixture was a pretty good call too, that added some depth that I wasn’t expecting. I’d definitely make these again, but perhaps with a bit of oatmeal. They didn’t quite satisfy my need for regular cookies though. Don’t expect them to replace a chocolate chip cookie in my book. It might be cool like to experiment with turning these into some kind of healthy breakfast cookie. Maybe cut down on the sugar, use whole wheat flour, add that oatmeal…

I sense something; a presence I've not felt since... since I had rhubarb and strawberry jam.

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 350F degrees.
2. In a large mixing bowl beat the butter, sugar, eggs, milk, nutmeg, and vanilla until smooth.
3. In another mixing bowl, combine the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, salt).
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in thirds and mix well. Stir in rhubarb, cranberries, and nuts.
5. Spoon out 2 tablespoons or less of dough per cookie onto a parchment lined cookie sheet. Bake for 12-14 minutes or until light golden brown. Allow the cookies to cool on the sheet for a couple of minutes rather than moving them immediately to a cooling rack to encourage chewiness.

Browned Butter, Brown Sugar Cookies

I’ve been thinking about using browned butter in a cookie dough for some time now and thought that making the simpler sugar cookie would be a great way to allow the flavor of the butter to shine. Well, allow the flavor of butter and brown sugar to shine. We’ve used browned butter before as part of a sauce with gnocchi and it contributed a lovely slightly nutty flavor. So making it was nothing terribly new. It’s not difficult to make, but it does require your attention. If you leave the stove unattended for even a moment, it somehow knows and tries it’s hardest to burn, but stand there and baby it for a few minutes and you will succeed every time.

These cookies come out like perfect tender disks of sweet goodness. The browned butter flavor gives this cookies a depth that many other butter cookies lack. Make these and people will comment on how good and tasty they are, I guarantee it.

Fresh out of the oven

My intent was to use a standard sugar cookie recipe and simply brown the butter before using it. As I was looking up various recipes, I saw that Cooks Illustrated had a much better method. They thought this through and combined the browned butter with brown sugar to make their cookies. The recipe below uses their technique.

Ingredients
14 Tbsps unsalted butter
1 3/4 ounces (about 1/4 cup) granulated sugar
14 ounces (about 2 cups) packed dark brown sugar
10.5 ounces (about 2 cups plus 2 Tbsps) unbleached all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp table salt
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
1 Tbsp vanilla extract

Directions
Preheat oven to 350F.
1. In a medium skillet, heat 10 tbsp butter over medium to med-high heat until melted. Once melted, continue to cool while whisking or swirling the pan for about 2 more minutes. You will know when you are done when the butter looks golden brown and smells nutty and fragrant. Transfer the butter to a large bowl and add the remaining 4 tbsp (cut up) to the liquefied butter. Stir once or twice and leave to melt into the butter about 15 minutes.

2. In a shallow bowl mix the granulated sugar (1/4 c) with an equal amount of the brown sugar (1/4 c or 1 3/4 oz). Rub together until it acquires the texture of wet sand. Set aside loosely covered.

3. In another bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, and baking powder.

4. To the bowl with the cooling brown butter add the salt and the remaining brown sugar (about 1 3/4 cups). Mix with eggbeaters or in a stand mixer until until no sugar lumps remain. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla and mix until it all comes together (30-45 seconds). Scrape down bowl. Add the flour mixture from step 3 and mix until combined (about 1 minute). Scrape down and stir with spatula to make sure everything is mixed.

5. Make about 24 individual cookies (about 2 tbsps each). Roll each cookie into a ball with your hands and then toss them into the bowl of sugar to coat. Keeping the cookies lightly covered until you toss them will prevent them from drying out and help the sugar stick.

6. Place them onto parchment lined baking sheets, keeping about 2 inches between each cookie (they will spread). Bake until cookies are browned and slightly puffy, 12 to 14 minutes. Rotating the baking sheet halfway through baking. Be careful not to overbake, it is hard to judge doneness because the color change will be subtle. The best test is to press lightly about halfway between the edge and the center of the cookie. The outer crust will have just begun to set firmly, but you will still very easily be able to make an indentation. Allow the cookies to cool ON THE SHEET for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Cooling on the sheet will keep the cookies slightly chewy, that’s as good thing.

Cookies: Chewy, Thin, and Puffy.

Changes in brief

The modifications were kicked off with a dangerously chewy chocolate chip cookie. The important changes to the recipe were to use bread flour, melted butter, one egg plus one yolk, more brown sugar than white, and to chill the dough before baking. These changes allowed the cookies to stay moist and chewy.

The super thin cookies (a favorite of mine) developed both a pleasing crunch and a slight chew. This was achieved by using all-purpose flour, softened butter, one egg plus milk, and more white sugar than brown. These cookies were not refrigerated, which meant that they spread and ‘melted’ as they baked.

The puffy cookies were last. The distinction here was to use cake flour, shortening (not butter), two eggs, baking powder (instead of baking soda), and chilled dough (like the chewy cookies). These tweaks allow the cookies to rise and puff as it baked.

But whyyyyy? Sure, you just read the differences in the recipes, but what actually happens? What is the difference between the three kinds of flour? Why change from butter to shortening?

Settle down, settle down, all will be revealed…

Let’s take it in order…

Chewy

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies.

• The most obvious change was to use bread flour. Bread flour is important because it has a higher protein content than other flours. The proteins, when mixed with water, form gluten. More gluten equals more chew. This is why bread is kneaded for before baking. It’s also why biscuits and muffins are generally just quickly combined instead of kneaded (ever seen a chewy biscuit? Neither have I).
• The butter is liquefied and milk is added. When the butter liquefies, the fat and water can easily separate. This means that the water in the butter (and the milk) bond with the proteins in the flour and form the gluten we just talked about.
• The recipe also called for a higher proportion of brown sugar to white sugar. The extra moisture and molasses in the brown sugar not only helps keep the cookies together as they bake, but also keeps the dough moist.
• Removing the egg white from one of the two eggs is important too. Have you ever seen a meringue? The main ingredient is, of course, egg whites. After it’s baked, the resulting dessert is dry and crispy. In the case of meringue, that’s a good thing; however, in chewy cookies-not so much. The removal of the egg white stops the cookie from drying out.
• The standard leavening of baking soda is unchanged in this recipe. The object is to provide the cookies with a little ‘give’, so when you bite into them they aren’t as hard as rocks. Baking soda is sufficient on it’s own to achieve this.
• Finally, the dough is chilled before baking. If you keep an eye on these cookies in the oven you notice minimal spreading. By the time the heat softens the chilled dough, the shape has already started to set.

Thin

Thin Chocolate Chip Cookies.

• All-purpose flour, which has a moderate amount of protein, was used in this recipe. AP flour is suitable for, well, all purposes. It can be kneaded into a bread dough, or it can be lightly stirred into a muffin mixture. When used in this recipe, the mixing incorporates the flour with the ingredients and forms some gluten, but not so much as to make it chewy. Even if gluten does form, there are a few more tricks to ensure it does not adversely affect the cookie.
• The butter is softened to room temperature, not turned it into a liquid. This means that the water in the butter doesn’t have as much time to bond with the proteins to form gluten.
• Only one egg was used, the second egg was replaced by a couple ounces of milk. Why remove an egg? Eggs set and puff when they are heated (soufflé, anyone?). Liquids… well… spread.
• Leavening is provided by the baking soda. This gives the cookies enough power to stay together and have a bit of chew, but not so much as to prevent them from spreading.
• In direct contrast to the chewy cookies, more white sugar is used than brown sugar. The lack of moisture and molasses normally found in brown sugar allows the cookies to spread as they bake, while the dry white sugar adds a crispier texture.
• Finally, this dough was scooped out and baked right after mixing. This room temperature, buttery dough beings to spread as soon as it is placed into the oven. By the time the dough sets, it has already spread into a thin (and might I add, delicious) cookie.

Puffy

Puffy chocolate chip cookies.

• Cake flour, not bread or AP, is used in this recipe. Cake flour has the lowest protein content of all the flours-meaning less gluten can develop-so these cookies have the least chew.
• Shortening is used instead of butter because it has a much higher melting point. This means that there is less spreading of the cookie as it bakes.
• Baking powder is used instead of baking soda. Baking powder has a more powerful leavening effect than baking soda due to the acids that react with liquids in the dough. The acidic baking powder releases carbon dioxide, which forces air into the dough. This is why these cookies develop that Chips Ahoy style crunch, and are so well suited for dunking.
• Lastly, the dough is chilled before baking. This same technique is used in the chewy cookies to help keep them mounded as they bake. If you watch the baking process, they spread out a bit first and, as the shortening starts to melt, the baking powder reacts, giving the cookies a lift half way through the baking process.

Now you know. Go forth and make chocolate chip cookies!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Brownie Hybrid

When I look for a dessert or sweet snack, I tend to fixate on the chocolate chip cookie. When a cookie is not available (alas), I am generally quite content with a rich, chocolaty brownie. I go for the chewy edge pieces, especially the corner ones. Those just seem to have more concentrated flavors and there is something about the extra chew and crunchiness that heightens my enjoyment of the snack. But I digress–

This is about the combination of the cookie and the brownie. I always hesitate before doing something like this. Each is amazing separately, combined should be better, right? It turns out that you can’t apply that logic to everything. Fortunately, this dessert does come together perfectly (unlike garlic butter and first dates…).

It really was almost the best of both worlds. The intense chocolate flavor of the brownie was present throughout the dish. You even had the texture change lots of brownies exhibit where the center was softer and fudgier than the edges. I know that some people live for those dense, fudge-like center pieces. The parts of the cookies that were exposed on the surface browned nicely and cooked up like a chewy cookie. The cookie batter used was perfect as it was moist enough to withstand the longer cooking time needed for brownies, but still just dry enough to get the texture difference you would expect. The parts of the cookie that were buried in the center or under the brownie batter still cooked correctly, but the crispy exterior was obviously compromised.

Getting a piece of cookie hidden in the brownie was like finding a tiny buried treasure. I will absolutely make these again.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Brownie Hybrid

I prefer tall, dense brownies, so I used a 9×9 square baking pan. If you like shorter brownies, use a 9×13 pan.

Cookie Batter
2 1/8 cups bleached all-purpose flour (10 1/2 ounces)
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
12 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 1/2 sticks), melted and cooled slightly
1 cup light brown sugar (7 ounces)
1/2 cup granulated sugar (3 1/2 ounces)
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups chocolate chips or chunks (semi or bittersweet)

Instructions
1. Preheat your oven to 350F with the rack on the lower-mid level.
2. In a bowl, combine the flour, salt, and baking soda.
3. In another bowl, whisk the melted butter, brown and granulated sugars together. Then add the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla.
4. Fold the dry ingredients into egg mixture until just combined. Be careful not to overmix. Fold in chips and refrigerate dough while making the brownie batter.
Alternatively, you can bake cookie bars in a 9×9 pan for 25-30 minutes at 325F.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Brownie Hybrid

Fudgy Brownies
5 ounces semisweet chocolate or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
2 ounces unsweetened chocolate , chopped
8 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 stick), cut into quarters
3 tablespoons cocoa powder
3 large eggs
1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon table salt
1 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

Instructions
1. In a double boiler (aka a small skillet on top of a small pot), melt the chocolates and butter, stirring occasionally with a silicone spatula to combine. Whisk in the cocoa and remove from heat once combined.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt.
3. Whisk together the chocolate and egg mixtures. Add the four and stir with a mixing spoon until just combined. Do not overmix.
If you want to just make the brownies, you can bake this in a 9×9 pan for 35-40 minutes at 350F.

When your powers combine!
1. Pour the brownie mixture into a 9×9 pan sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.
2. Remove the cookie dough from the fridge. Using your hands, break the dough into chunks, balls, or logs (any shapes you want). Press the cookie dough into the brownie batter at various depths. Press some all the way to the bottom, leave others resting near the surface. I used only about 3/4 of the cookie dough. The rest of the dough can be refrigerated/frozen for making cookies another time. Since when is having ready-made cookie dough a bad thing?
3. Bake the combined doughs at 350F for about 40 minutes in a 9×9 pan sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.

Tip: A plastic knife cuts through brownie batter without the brownies clinging to the knife.

Stack o cookies

Thin cookies are not normally a favorite. Most are dry and crumbly and lack consistency. It’s not surprising that most people gloss over thin cookies and move on to the chewy or cakey ones. Overlooking this recipe would be wrong, wrong, wrong. These are a surprise of goodness. This recipe produces one of my favorite cookies; they are crispy around the edges, and the thin dough is punctuated by bursts of chocolate. Don’t let the flatness fool you. They are definitely the types of cookies you can still sink your teeth into.

I must admit, I did something crazy with these cookies over the weekend. I was tired and craving cereal, but had none in the house. The cookie jar was on the counter freshly filled with these cookies, teasing me. Naturally, I made my own Cookie Crisp! Just break the cookie into bite sized pieces, put in a bowl, pour milk over it, eat, and repeat until you feel sick. (I recommend skipping the last part of the instructions there-everything up to my third bowl was going so well.)

Cookies, cooling.

Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 egg
2 ounces milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 sticks unsalted butter (Bring to room temperature, do not melt in the microwave.)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees F.


Dough, ready to bake.

2. In one mixing bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (flour, salt and baking soda). In another mixing bowl, combine the wet ingredients (egg, milk and vanilla) and let come to room temperature.
3. Cream the room temperature butter on low speed. Add the sugars, increase the speed to high, and mix until light and fluffy.
4. Add the egg mixture and mix on a low speed. Once it begins to be incorporated, increase the speed and mix until well combined.
5. Slowly add the flour mixture. Reduce the speed again so flour doesn’t get everywhere and scrape the edges of the bowl down every now and again to mix everything well.
6. Fold in the chocolate chips.
7. Scoop the cookies in balls onto parchment-lined baking sheets. AB suggests putting only 6 cookies per sheet and using a #20 disher (each cookie will weigh about 1.5 ounces). I don’t have a disher, but if you end up with about 30 balls of dough, then you have made them the right size.
8. Bake for about 14 minutes. Rotate the cookies after about 6 minutes, and check after 5 minutes more. Once they are just turning golden brown, remove from oven and cool on a wire rack. They may look puffy as you remove them from the oven, but they will thin out as they cool.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

The last time we indulged my chocolate chip cookie obsession, we looked at the Nestle Toll House recipe. Though I ate those for many years I was never completely satisfied. I always thought that, with a bit of tinkering, the recipe could be altered to produce a better cookie. The problem was that I didn’t understand what modifications could be made to get different results. All of that changed when I saw an episode of Good Eats, Three Chips for Sister Martha. In that episode, Alton Brown makes three different cookies-a chewy one, a puffy one, and a thin one-each using the Toll House recipe as a template.

Let’s get the recipes in your hands and review the cookies before we analyze the changes and why they matter. The first three of the next four cookie posts will be reviews and recipes of each of the cookies. The fourth will be an explanation of the science behind the changes. Let’s start with the Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie.

Somebody got to one of them...

This recipe results in a bready, chewy cookie. As you can tell by the photos, the cookies are mounded and thick. Personally, though it was a good example of what a chewy cookie should be, it didn’t knock my socks off. But that’s just me. Some of my friends disagreed, and believed that the thick, chocolaty cookie was one of the best they have eaten. I’ll let you be the judge.

Ingredients
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Recipe

1. Preheat your oven to 375 F.
2. Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom medium saucepan over low heat.
3. In a medium mixing bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
4. Add the melted butter to your mixer’s work bowl (or into a large mixing bowl and use a hand mixer). To this, add the sugar and brown sugar and cream on medium speed.
5. Add the egg, yolk, milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined.
6. Incorporate the flour into the mixture slowly as to not spray flour everywhere. Once all the flour has been added, fold in the chocolate chips.
7. Chill the dough.
8. Scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets. AB suggests putting only 6 cookies per sheet and using a #20 disher (each cookie will weigh about 1.5 ounces).
9. Bake for 14 minutes, checking after 6. (Rotate the cookies about half way though for even browning.) Once they are just turning golden brown, remove from oven and cool on a wire rack.

...moments before being devoured.

Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

I am not shy about my love of chocolate chip cookies. I love ‘em. I can’t get enough of that carby-chewy-chocolaty combo. I will try almost any kind of cookie—sugar, oatmeal, etc.—but my love affair begins and ends with chocolate chip cookies.

I have long been on the search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. It’s an untenable goal, I know, but the journey is fun. Friends have pointed me to recipes and bakeries asserting that they have found the one for me, but all have fallen short. I’ve found some stellar recipes, and frequented some amazing bakeries, but nothing yet has made me stop my search.

There have been many loves along the way, each one a learning experience, building upon the last. I’ll walk you though some of the highlights and share the recipes. All the variations will be good and you may find yourself satisfied with a number of them, but I’ll keep searching.

Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

To understand the origin of my obsession, it’s best to start at the beginning, and in the beginning, there was Nestle Toll House.

This is the now classic recipe seen on the back of every bag of Nestle Toll House morsels. The original recipe is attributed to Ruth Wakefield, one of the owners of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts in the 1930s. There are two popular variants of how the first chocolate chip cookie came to be. The commonality of both stories is that the end result was an accident. One version states that Mrs. Wakefield added chocolate expecting it to melt into the dough. The second version claims that a chocolate bar was shaken off a shelf by the vibrations of a kitchen mixer. That chocolate bar fell into the mixing bowl where it was broken up and incorporated. Either way it happened, we can be glad of the addition.

So let’s make them already.

Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies
The recipe comes from the Nestle website.
Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Preheat your oven to 375F with the oven rack in the middle position.
2. In a bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and salt.
3. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugars and vanilla extract. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat thoroughly to combine after each addition.
4. Gradually add the flour mixture to the large mixing bowl. Fold in the chocolate chips.
5. Scoop rounded tablespoons of the dough onto a cookie sheet and bake for 9 to 11 minutes (until golden brown on the edges). I use parchment paper to make for easier cleanup. Allow to cook slightly and transfer to a cooking rack.

Rounded tablespoons of dough.

Into the oven for 9-11 minutes.

Finished cookies.

Note: I sifted the flour before measuring and the cookies came out a bit thinner than I remembered. After talking with some friends, I figured out that not sifting your flour actually makes for the thicker cookies to which most people are accustomed. So, err on the side of using too much flour than too little. Cooking For Engineers tests confirmed my suspicions.