recipes/src/chocolate_chip_cookies.md

Chocolate-Chip Cookies

A living document of my journey to perfect the chocolate-chip cookie. Adapted from "NYC Crispy Thin and Gooey Cookie Recipe".

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour, spoon-and-leveled.

• 0.5 tsp baking soda.

• 1 tsp cornstarch.

• 0.75 tsp salt.

• 1 cup brown butter¹ , room-temperature.

• 0.75 cup brown sugar.

• 0.75 cup granulated sugar.

• 1 egg + 1 yolk, room-temperature² .

• 1.5 tsp vanilla extract.

• 2 tsp milk³ .

• 4 oz dark chocolate^{4 5} .

• 4 oz milk chocolate⁵ .

Method

Part One: Make

1. Whisk the flour, baking soda, and salt in bowl A.
2. Beat brown butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar in bowl B until light and fluffy⁶ .
3. Mix egg (plus yolk), vanilla, and milk into bowl B until just combined.
4. Incrementally mix⁷ B into A until just combined.
5. Fold chocolate into B.
6. Chill dough for 30 minutes⁸ .
7. Take out, and split into ninths⁹ .
8. Chill again for 2+ hours¹⁰ .

Part Two: Bake

1. Pre-heat the oven to 325°F convection¹¹ bake.
2. Take the dough balls straight out of the oven into a baking tray¹² (lined with parchment paper), and bake for 10 minutes.
3. Take out, and bang the tray on the counter top 3+ times¹³ .
4. Put it straight back in the over for another 4-5 minutes¹⁴ .
5. Take out the cookies, and let them cool in the tray until room temperature¹⁵ . While your at it, sprinkle a pich of salt on each cookie.

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1. This is a key part of the recipe. To make, place 2 sticks of butter in a pan over medium heat. Stir constantly. The butter will eventually bubble (the water content of the butter evaporates), and particles will settle at the base (these are the water-soluble proteins). These particles will start to brown. When they turn mahogany, immediately pour them out into a heat-safe bowl.

   Wait for the butter to cool down before continuing. Optimally, it should resolidify. But that not required, as the process will take a while. ↩︎

2. To quickly heat them up, place the two eggs (uncracked) in a bowl with hot water. ↩︎

3. You can use any type of milk here: oat milk, almond milk, or whatever. ↩︎

4. Dark chocolate means anything above 60% cocoa powder content. I usually to 70-ish%. ↩︎

5. The shape of your chocolate is very important here. Chips won't do. You should aim for the piece to look like pieces of a chocolate bar: rectangular and thin.

   You can do this yourself by microwaving the chocolate in a bowl (mixing between iterations) until it is molten, pour it into a flat pan, and put it in the freezer until it hardens. You'll get a flat sheet of chocolate you can break apart into pieces. ↩︎

6. Starting out, it will feel like a sludge. But as you continue, it will start to get paler (air pockets are formed as the sugar crystals shear the butter). If you started with liquid brown butter, the mixture should get stronger, and hold its shape.

   Don't over do the mixing, though. If you over-aerate the dough, it will rise majestically, and them collapse under its own weight. ↩︎

7. For me, I space it out in thirds. ↩︎

8. We chill twice, because the dough is very sticky when we first make it. Putting it in the fridge for 15-30 minutes solidifies the butter, making it more malleable. ↩︎

9. I like to put them in cupcake cups, and store them in tupperware. ↩︎

10. Chilling the dough does two things here. First, we give the dough time to fully absorb the liquid, which includes all of the tasty fat- and water-soluable flavors. It makes a fuller flavor profile. Secondly, it hardens the butter, so we get a chunkier cookie. ↩︎

11. Convection moves the air around in the oven, baking the cookies faster, but also more evenly inside the oven. ↩︎

12. Give them some room. When cooked, they should be 5-5.5 inches in diameter. ↩︎

13. The number isn't very important, just make sure you see them spread a bit. The point here is to get them to spread just a bit more, and make some ripples in the crust. ↩︎

14. When the time is up, I press my finger into the top of one of the cookies. What I'm looking for here in the crust is like a plastic bag filled with water: the crust should be just cooked, the but inside still a bit liquid. ↩︎

15. You cannot pick up these cookies normally. They will break, and that is fine. ↩︎