This cookie recipe is sponsored by Squarespace.
I've been developing recipes professionally almost four years now, and I don't think I've
come up with a better tip than starting your cookies under the broiler/grill. It results
uncommonly pretty cookies with some caramelized flavor in the flakey top. I've been trying to
refine my old recipe lately, and here it is, with precise measurements this time.
A stick, 113g unsalted butter. Just melt it down in the microwave. You could brown the
butter — some people who aren't me really like the taste of that — but
be aware that browning also boils off the like 15% of butter that is water,
so you'll either need to add a little water or reduce the flour a bit.
200g of sugar. For granulated sugar that would be one cup, but I'm using powdered sugar which
makes for a slight improvement in appearance. You get a smoother surface on the cookie. It
doesn't make a huge difference — don't go out of your way to find powdered sugar for this.
Try brown sugar, for flavor — or drop in a little
dab of molasses because brown sugar is just sugar plus a little molasses.
Give that a preliminary beating, mostly to lower the temperature of the butter, in case the butter
is so hot that it's gonna prematurely cook the egg. Beat that egg in. If you're using granulated
sugar, you can get a similar effect to what I'm getting here by just beating for an extra couple
minutes at this stage, let the sugar dissolve a bit in the water from the egg — and the butter.
Nice, pudding-like texture that, from the powdered sugar — and from the fact that I
didn't get my butter super hot. If the butter was hotter, the mixture would be runnier at this
stage. That doesn't really matter either way, it's just a good cautionary note about judging
the content of a dough by its consistency — something I probably do a little too much.
I like a whole teaspoon of this kosher salt. The kind of salt only matters in
as much as different salts will measure out differently by volume. 10g is what I like,
which is gonna be noticeably salty. You might like less.
You know, I used to advocate baking powder, but after testing it, I think I prefer simple
baking soda — in chewy cookies, at least. For cakey cookies you want the baking powder,
which has an acid and a base. Baking soda is just the base. Half a teaspoon of that, maybe 3g. It's
a subtle thing, but baking soda just tastes a little better here. Acid does inhibit browning.
Everything in me is saying just slosh in some vanilla,
but I'm measuring it out for you. Let's say, two teaspoons vanilla extract, which is how much?
"8 grams."
There you go. You might like less vanilla. Some people say I put in too much. Having tested it
side by side, I really do think these come out better with bread flour. Bread flour makes chewier
cookies, browner cookies, but all-purpose flour is OK. This 00 flour is super-finely ground, which
again gets you a nicer, smoother top. Flour grind doesn't matter that much to this, but it's nice.
And in all my experiments I determined the best quantity of flour relative to a stick
of butter is 230g, which is about a cup and a half — of bread flour.
AP flour is lighter so it measures out differently. Mix that up nice and smooth.
Honestly, even going by weight has been hit and miss for me as far as getting
THE perfect cookies goes. Higher protein flour absorbs more water,
etc etc. Measuring by weight can lull you into a false sense of security.
The key here is enough flour that the dough is about that sticky. If it's not sticky at all,
you're gonna get taller, drier, kinda scone-like cookies. That would happen,
by the way, if you boiled out all the butter water and didn't lower the flour accordingly.
If it's way more sticky, the cookies will spread super thin in the oven. I
find that if it feels just a little too sticky to me,
it's perfect. And you could put in chocolate chips or whatever but today I'm putting in M&Ms,
just for funsies, and a hundred grams is the right amount of any chocolate for me.
That's proportionally less chocolate than what the classic Toll House recipe calls for,
but Toll House is in the business of selling chocolate chips, so what do you expect?
Since the dough is a little sticky, you can make it easier to shape by chilling
it in the fridge for a bit, make it more solid. But based on my recent experiments,
the fridge makes no difference in how the cookies actually bake.
I usually bake cookies on parchment paper, but the paper does burn a little with this
method and that makes a nasty smell, so I'm going bare pan today. If you care
that much about precision, 115g each is a good weight for half a dozen big cookies.
I just roll them out into golf balls first. No nonstick spray on the pan,
by the way. With these cookies at least, the spray does almost nothing to inhibit sticking
and it gives a slight fried flavor to the base. Now I go back and flatten each ball
into a little puck. You can skip this, but they bake prettier and more evenly if they start as
pucks. And if you really care about aesthetics you can refine the circles a bit before baking.
I've had my oven heating already to 375ºF/190ºC, convection. But I will immediately turn that off
and turn the broiler on high. What the Brits call a grill is up here at the top, it heats up in a
minute or two, and if you don't have one — just bake the cookies normally, it's gonna be fine.
Under my broiler, this stage 90 seconds, tops. Once you have golden brown domes
that will crack in attractive patterns as the cookies spread, get them out fast before they
burn. If you have multiple pans of cookies, brown them one-at-time. It'll go real fast.
Now I'll turn the broiler off and the convection bake back on. Give the broiler a minute or two
to cool down. The oven itself is already at the right temperature because we pre-heated. Yes,
the word "pre-heat" has valid use cases and I just gave you one, pedants.
If you don't have a convection fan blowing in there, you're gonna be
fine. Just maybe rotate the pans halfway through to help them bake
more evenly. Conventional ovens have hot spots that the fan helps to even
out. And the fan accelerates baking a bit. These only needed like eight more minutes.
For the texture I like, I pull them when they look just a hair under-baked,
and that is that. So, the broiler-then-bake procedure that I invented accidentally one
day when I turned on the broiler instead of the oven, which I meant to turn on — I think
this replicates the look of a bake done in a professional steam-injection oven. The steam
gels the outer starch layer and gets you that smooth effect. That's just my guess.
Let these cool and solidify before you try to scrape them off the pan. If you just
gotta have hot, soft, gooey cookies, well, bake them on parchment paper.
Once cooled a bit, these scrape off just fine
with my thin silicon spatula. And I've been eating cookies all day,
so Lauren is gonna take this bite for me. If the texture seems a bit too firm for you,
try them again in the morning. They will soften, unless you live in a dessert with no humidity.
There you go. In four years, I've really come up with no better recipe. And I've worked with no
better sponsor than Squarespace. Legit — from a YouTuber's perspective, no sponsor is easier to
work with than Squarespace. They review videos promptly, they respond to emails promptly and
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It's just everything you need to build and run a website. Start building on for free any time, but
when you want to buy a custom domain name through Squarespace or pay Squarespace to make your site
live, use my code RAGUSEA and save yourself 10%. Thanks for some good years, Squarespace.
And while we're thanking people, let's thank the person who posted my original
and much-less-well-made version of this cookie recipe to Reddit almost four years ago. You're
as responsible for my new career as much as any other single person and I thank you profusely.
"I gotta say, that's a pretty good bite that I just took."
"Very beautiful, very aesthetic bite."
[Pac-Man sound]
"Mmm, that cookie tastes amazing."
"Good."