Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie - NOT!

This past week the May/June edition of Cook's Illustrated arrived in my mailbox. I was on my way to work and in a hurry when I checked the mail, but never, not matter what, in too much of a hurry to check the index. Imagine my surprise to see "The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie" listed there. When Cook's Illustrated claims to have the perfect recipe for anything I pay attention, but the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe? I am not going to lie - it kind of ticked me off. I already found the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe (see my previous entry for Strobel Cookies). It took me 31 years of searching, testing, and tweaking, but darn it, I found it. And because I was on my way to work when I discovered the recipe, I had to wait a full two days to try it. It was a long two days. I read the recipe over many times because theirs was a totally novel approach to the chocolate chip cookie. It calls for browning the butter (and I LOVE brown butter), an extra egg yolk, and three episodes of whisking, each followed by three minutes of resting. (Well, this is Cook's Illustrated after all.)

So Saturday afternoon I gathered all ingredients and followed the recipe EXACTLY as written, right down to using a scale to measure everything. I even used the Ghirardelli really really dark 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate chips as they recommend. The family gathered around the kitchen for the 14 minutes of baking. I passed time by wiping down the counter three times. Scott tried to sneak some of the dough. I got out a cooling rack as they recommended, even though my extensive testing shows that cooling racks are not only unnecessary, but actually detrimental to the finished product. Finally the timer rang and the cookies came to rest on the cooling rack. Sarah got out the milk. Rebekah got out the napkins. Then I read the final sentence of the directions: cool cookies completely before serving. WHAT?? Cold chocolate chip cookies? Seriously? When one makes the claim to a perfect chocolate chip cookie, warmness is implicit in the statement. But if Cook's Illustrated wants to claim their cookie as perfect, then we are playing by their rules. Cold cookies it is.

And guess what? Cook's Illustrated perfect chocolate chip cookies are not. At best we give them a C+. The bottom was too brown, the dough too sweet, and the texture was too bendable, not crisp on the outside and chewy/soft on the inside. Whew. What a relief.

10 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Lynnette, thank you SOOO much for your determined pursuit of the perfect CCC for all of us out here. The sacrifice your family made in trying these has saved many of us from the mistake of thinking perhaps your original well-tested, well-deservedly-titled Best CCC's ever were perhaps not so anymore. Phew, That was close! :D :D :D LOVE your blog btw!
    -Cindy

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  3. Cindy, I am so glad you appreciate all of our efforts, and that you like my blog. It's been a sacrifice eating all of those cookies over the years but we are soldiering on. - Lynnette

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  4. Maybe it's the oven temperature? 375 seems really high for a cookie. I want to give this one a try, but it seems really sweet. There's even more sugar than their thick and chewy and i have to reduce the sugar in that one! Now I'm kinda worried about that brownie texture. It seems like a lot of work for this recipe.. I hope it's worth it.

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  5. I too, am searching for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe and my opinion, for what it's worth, is these were the best I have ever made. I only cooked mine for about 12 minutes in a confection oven and cooked them on an insulated cookie sheet. I love Nestles chips over any others and used these in the recipe and with these added changes they were perfect, just like the recipe said, crisp on the outside and chewey on the inside and NOTHING, NOTHING like a brownie. They are worth the test!

    Jackie from Lebanon, OH

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  6. Thanks for your opinion. I baked another batch the next day at a lower temperature, on convection, and we still just didn't like them. At all. And you are correct, the brownie texture is a poor description. They really were not at all like a brownie. I am just at a loss to correctly describe them. I suppose it all depends on what you like in a cookie. We like our cookies a little crispy on the very outside but still chewy and a little gooey on the inside. The CI cookie was more bendable than what we like, plus we just found them too sweet and rich and butterscotch tasting. Maybe this argument is a futile as the Mac/PC debate - depends on what you like. For the record, we are Mac.

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  7. Except for my son Ben. He's a PC but we still love him.

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  8. I'm so happy you posted a "not" perfect review, I was starting to think there was something wrong with my cookie batch.

    I made these yesterday and also found them too sweet and more burnt than toffee tasting. It's kind of an odd taste. I baked mine 12 minutes - can't imagine what 14 would have done to them. Gak!

    I used light brown sugar and Ghirardelli semi-sweet. Thought about re-doing with dark and the 60% bitterweet - not sure if it's worth the effort to see if they turn out better. ; p

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  9. Oh, thank goodness I found this discussion! I thought these tasted weird. It's the browned butter flavor that I can't get past and I love browned butter, apparently just not in cookies.

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  10. A friend made these for us and I LOVED them! So if yours are better... I'd love that recipe!?! I'll hunt through your blog & give 'em a whirl. :)

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