Hey guys, welcome back to Basics with Babish
where this week we're taking a look at the quintessential cookie -
chocolate chip.
We're bumping up this basic biscuit
from Plain Jane to premium.
Let's get down to basics.
♪
Okay, so one of the easiest ways to upgrade your cookies instantly
is to brown your butter.
We've got one cup of high-quality, unsalted butter here
that we're heating over a medium heat
until we start to see
the milk fats separate and turn a light, toasty golden-brown.
You want to take it off the heat at the very second that you
start seeing those milk solids turn brown.
You're going to burn some butter, don't worry about it, don't beat yourself up,
just, when you do get a good batch
go ahead and refrigerate it for at least an hour or until completely re-solidified.
We're now going to add the cold butter to
the bowl of a stand-mixer.
If you don't have a stand-mixer,
just let the butter soften up a little bit,
but ideally we want to use cold butter.
To that we're going to add half a cup of plain old white sugar,
and 1 and one half cups of brown sugar.
You can go light or dark, depending on how
molasses-ey you like your cookies.
I'm going dark.
From here it's kind of the regular cookie procedure,
we are creaming together the butter and sugars.
Getting those guys whipped together
at medium speed for
three to four minutes, or until
thoroughly combined,
and then we're going to pause to crack two cold eggs into the bowl,
and mix to combine.
Once we've got that all good and homogeneous,
we're going to shift our attention to the drier side of things.
The dry ingredients.
In a medium bowl, we are whisking together
about 11 and a half ounces of all purpose flour.
And a solid tablespoon of kosher salt,
this might seem like a lot,
but hey, sweet and salty.
Ever heard of it?
A half teaspoon of baking soda,
and then my secret little ingredient,
you can feel free to omit this,
but about three quarters of a teaspoon of cinnamon.
I think this adds a nice, subtle warmth to all the butter and chocolate,
and it doesn't really taste cinnamon-y.
Give it a shot, I think you'll like it.
We are whisking those together until
thoroughly combined.
Before adding about half of the mixture to our wet ingredients.
We're doing this in batches, because just like pancakes, we don't really want to over-mix the cookie dough
once we've introduced flour.
Because that will result in
gluten development, which will result in a tough cookie.
Ha ha...
ah.
Once that's combined we're going to add the remaining
flour mixture and
your desired mix-ins.
I'm just starting with high-quality chocolate chips,
and adding the nuts later to half the batch for those non-nut folks out there.
J. Kenji Lopez-Alt also has an awesome
technique where instead of using chocolate chips, you chop up
a whole block of chocolate,
thereby giving you a whole bunch of different sizes and
textures.
Now we're going to stop mixing this guy as soon as it comes together,
and, again, optionally, cover and refrigerate for up to three days.
Even as little as an hour in the fridge can make
a noticeable difference in texture and colour.
But a few days will actually give you more pronounced flavour.
Now as you can see, I've separated half the cookie dough, and
toasted some freshly-chopped walnuts that I have allowed to cool,
and I'm going to mix those in to the nut half of the cookie dough.
Now, my last little cookie trick
is inspired by Levain Bakery
here in New York,
Basically,
you grab a handfull of your dough, roll it into a ball,
and then tear it open,
thus creating a whole bunch of
craggly
cracks and crevices,
which gives you a more
rustic-looking cookie.
And because we used butter as opposed to shortening,
and because we kept everything cold
these guys are not going to lose much of their height or definition.
As we bake them at 350 degrees fahrenheit,
from 12-17 minutes depending on how big you've made them.
Now again, this is going to come down to preference.
I like my cookies sort of almost like
cookie dough in the centre, I like them really raw.
So these guys are going to deflate and they're going to stay chewy and gooey
long into the forseeable future.
I'm also going to hit them with a little bit
of flaky sea salt.
Now, of course, taste the cookie first to make sure you didn't oversalt it beforehand,
but if it could use a little bit of an extra hit of
crunchy salty flakes, go for it.
Next up we've got our nutters,
make sure that you're keeping everything separate and being careful to not
share any cooking surfaces
or cooling surfaces with the non-nut cookies,
in fact, bake all the nut cookies second,
if you're concerned about anyone's nut allergies.
So that's how you make Grandma Babish's
down home, country style
brown butter
chocolate chip cookies.
And let me show you why we specifically engineered these to retain their height,
so we keep a nice, gooey centre.
Doesn't get much better than that.
Now, I hope you guys try this recipe yourselves
and go ahead and experiment, try using shortening instead of butter,
and see how it changes the texture and final appearance of the cookie.
Try chilled versus un-chilled ingredients,
try aging cookie dough versus un-aged cookie dough,
after all, can you really have too many cookies?
I mean, yeah, of course you can. So...
enjoy responsibly.
And bring a plate over to your neighbours'.
Who knows, maybe you guys will start dating, and maybe that's how
you meet your future spouse.
So I guess what I'm trying to say is,
you're welcome, and I'll see you at the bachelor party.