Wednesday, August 26, 2009

THE Chocolate Chip Cookies



Ok, butter, you win, you are amazing.

I just made the.best.chocolate.chip.cookies...ever. So good, they forced me to return to the blogosphere to report on their deliciousness.

While trying to catch up on my never-ending mountain of unread food blogs piling up in my RSS feed reader I accidentally opened this post. I'm not typically too excited about chocolate chip cookies (not that I would turn one down were it offered to me), I'm usually more into shortbread and spice cookies. But something about this recipe peaked my interest (that, and the fact that I've been meaning to bake some cookies to share with the new neighbors).

I followed the recipe pretty closely, even leaving the dough to rest 24 hours in the fridge. But I did sub in walnuts for part of the chocolate chip amount (not paying enough attention to the ingredient list, I only bought a 12 oz bag of chips at the store - had to make up the remainder in choppped walnuts). I used a mixture of whole wheat pastry flour and white bread flour. Also, I couldn't bring myself to make 3.5 oz cookies (really? THAT BIG? Who needs a cookie that big??) I scaled them down to 2 oz cookies, which are still plenty large. I reduced the cooking time to 16 minutes, and that was about perfect when combined with 3 minutes of resting on the hot cookie sheet before disembarking to the cooling rack.

Maybe it was the rest time (more likely the copious amount of butter) but these were amazing. Perfect texture, crispy on the outside, a little soft on the inside, a gorgeous brown color, and the sprinkling of sea salt on top is the perfect compliment to the sweetness of the dark chocolate.

If this isn't the perfect way to meet the neighbors, I don't know what is.