My willpower is always tested with chocolate chip cookies though. I really find it almost impossible to turn down a good chocolate chip cookie. Unless it has nuts. But then I'll usually pick them out!
Yesterday I made the Alton Brown "Chewy" cookie recipe. I've made it before, but a long time ago and while I remembered the cookies as being good, I couldn't remember why. So I made them, and M.'s coworkers are benefiting from the vast majority today out of deference to my waistline. For those not aware, Alton Brown has a food show on the Food Network called "Good Eats", and has created three kinds of chocolate chip cookie recipes. The three recipes or the three types of cookies are called the "Puffy", the "Thin" and the "Chewy". Since I'm a big fan of chewy chocolate chip cookies, that's what I made.
I did have a little trouble with the recipe. First of all, its very precise. Tinkering with the steps will lead to disaster. When it calls for bread flour - the recipe means bread flour. That wasn't my problem. My problem was the size of my cookies relative to the baking time. The recipe calls for baking the cookies for 14 minutes, which I did. It also calls for using a scoop to scoop the dough, which I did. It just took me some time (and some cookies) to realize that my scoop must be much smaller than the recipe called for as my yield was much greater. I generally make cookies pretty small, so that when I eat several the damage isn't as great. :) But in this case, that meant I was over-cooking the cookies. Once I scaled back the cooking time, the cookies were complete in their chewy goodness.
The Chewy Recipe
Alton Brown - Good Eats
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 1/4 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 cup sugar
1 1/4 cups brown sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 tablespoons milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
Heat oven to 375 degrees F.
Melt the butter in a heavy-bottom medium saucepan over low heat. Sift together the flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside.
Pour the melted butter in the mixer’s work bowl. Add the brown sugar. Cream the butter and sugars on medium speed. Add the egg, yolk, 2 tablespoons milk and vanilla extract and mix until well combined. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture until thoroughly combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
Chill the dough, then scoop onto parchment-lined baking sheets, 6 cookies per sheet. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden brown, checking the cookies after 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet for even browning. Cool completely and store in an air tight container.
Technorati Tags: baking, cookie, chocolate chip
4 comments:
I'm with you on the chewy cookie...I always use a recipe from America's Test Kitchen that uses regular old flour. That's interesting that a cookie recipe uses bread flour! Oh, but they look yummy...
I love how Alton does his recipes - it can be daunting though sometimes.
C is for chocolate chip cookies, it's good enough for me; oh cookie cookie cookie starts with C
mmmmmmmmm chocolate.....
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