let's be honest chocolate chip cookies
are always good but when you have a
really really good one it's
life-changing we pretty much bought all
the chocolate chips in new york city we
baked we tested we ate and now we have
the ultimate chocolate chip recipe for
you
we're going to ball out with a few extra
flavors but really all you need for
cookies are sugar flour fat eggs and
chocolate and on our quest to find the
best we had to test out what all of
these ingredients do to a cookie and how
we can use their best properties to come
up with the ultimate recipe
let's talk sugar so we've got white
sugar light brown sugar and dark brown
sugar really the only difference is the
addition of molasses light brown sugar
has a bit of molasses and dark brown has
a bit more molasses in it for this test
we wanted to see what just using one
sugar in each dough would do to a cookie
with all white sugar spread the most
didn't have a ton of flavor light brown
sugar was a little bit chewier spread a
little bit less and the dark brown sugar
was really overpowering in its flavor
and spread the least and visually you
can see a big difference too and what we
found was you really can't get that
classic flavor just using one next thing
we had to tackle is flour
so we've got all-purpose bread flour and
cake flour
really the only difference here is the
amount of protein and therefore gluten
in these flours
just think about it like this breads
like really nice and chewy has a great
texture great structure having that
gluten and protein whereas cake you
think of it as tender it's light it's
airy it's going to have less of those
things what it really comes down to is
taste and texture all purpose gave you
you know standard cookie the bread flour
led to a significantly chewier cookie
the cake flour was the one that really
spread the most it was pretty delicate
and then similar to sugar we decided
that in order to get the best result you
got to use a combination of two
so on to fat we wanted to see the
difference between softened butter and
melted butter and then we wanted to see
what would happen if we switched it out
completely and used coconut oil
between softened butter and melted
butter visually they look pretty similar
the melted butter spread a little bit
more and then taste we didn't notice a
huge difference either tested with
coconut oil and it worked it was a
cookie but it lost like that great
oomph you know that butter brings to all
baked goods and so in the end we
definitely prefer using butter
eggs we went pretty simple with this one
just an egg and an egg yolk contributes
to more of like a fudgier richer cookie
obviously we're making chocolate chip
cookies we have to have chocolate chips
but we're also going to add a little bit
something extra with some chunks of dark
chocolate cut it with a serrated knife
into little chunks and add that to your
dough it's really nice because you have
a variance of flavors and textures
throughout
it's really just a few fundamental
ingredients in learning how to master
their properties in order to get the
best result that you're after
and finally after all that testing we
came up with our ultimate recipe here we
go
so we're going to start by sifting out
the flour we're gonna do all-purpose and
bread flour salt and baking soda as well
we really liked the two-factor of the
bread flour with a combination of
all-purpose to kind of give us best of
both worlds
and then we're gonna move on to the
butter so we're gonna do melted butter
but we're gonna take it one step further
and brown it all you need to do to make
brown butter is throw it all in a
saucepan and get it to a boil after a
few minutes of boiling the milk solids
and the butter are gonna start to toast
and turn a really gorgeous brown nutty
color keep stirring it to make sure that
the butter is browning evenly and once
you can see the really dark brown bits
on the bottom you're going to pour it
off ideally into a liquid measuring cup
this is going to do two things one it's
going to quickly cool down the butter so
it stops the cooking you don't want to
burn it and then also we want to make
sure that we have a cup of liquid when
it's all said and done so while making
the brown butter you do end up boiling
off a good amount of liquid so we're
just going to top it up with a bit of
water until we reach one cup just let it
chill out for a bit come to room
temperature before you proceed
so we found that we really need a
combination of white and dark brown
sugar to get that really great flavor
that we were after so add the vanilla at
this point and the espresso powder
espresso powder is one of those little
flavor boosters again all about those
contrasting notes that really work well
with anything really sweet and then
you're going to add in that liquid gold
oh my gosh so nice
and cream those together this is another
reason why we want the butter to be a
little bit on the cooler side and
incorporates really really nicely with
the sugar when we were testing if you
add the brown butter when it's too hot
it can make the dough a little bit
greasy
then in go the egg and the egg yolk ugh
and the smell that comes off this thing
oh my god it's pretty much like the best
smell you can get from cooking
and then go the flour we like to do it
in about thirds or so just so they don't
have flour going all over your kitchen
and just beat it until you don't see a
ton of extra flour it doesn't need to be
totally incorporated a little bit of
flour that's not incorporated is
actually good you'll finish
incorporating the rest of the flour when
you fold in the chocolate
the nice thing about using these chunks
is that you get some small shards of
chocolate that kind of get everywhere
mixed with the chopped up chocolate
chunks and it's just kind of like
so good
and that's it
that's your dough try not to eat it all
when it's wrong
all right so if you're an a plus student
you can go ahead and put these in the
fridge to chill overnight you'll get the
best flavor that way but if you have no
self-restraint like me you can bake them
off right now
the nice thing about this dough is it
has so much flavor that we've built into
it that they're still going to be really
really good if you bake them right away
if you are going to be amazing and put
them in the fridge overnight we do
recommend scooping them first and
putting them on a baking sheet then
putting them in the fridge it's just so
much easier than trying to scoop a
really hard dough from the fridge
cookies are kind of the equalizer of all
baked goods you know there's so much
fancy stuff out there but
honestly is there anything better than a
perfect chocolate chip cookie just look
at that you've got these pockets of
chocolate from using those big chocolate
chunks it's got all the cracks and
crinkles that you want in a chocolate
chip cookie the center's ooey gooey the
outside is crunchy it's just got kind of
like all the flavor and texture that you
could possibly pack into one little
cookie and you'll never go back to
another recipe again
there's a list of like top five smells
in the culinary world and i'm pretty
sure butter comes up number one all the
time this is just a list i made up but
i was gonna say what
it's a top it's a top culinary list ask
anyone oh my god brown butter ah so good