Over the past several months I have been making random batches of chocolate cookies in my seemingly never ending quest to make the perfect chewy chocolate chip cookie. I have tried a few different recipes mixing and matching ingredients to find that perfect combination to get a nice chewy consistency. I'm talking about a nice brown, crispy outside and chewy-gooey inside that melts in your mouth. I've gotten close, but none of the recipes that claim to produce these chewy cookies are up to par with my expectations. Don't get me wrong, they make delicious cookies, but so far I've gotten a lot of cookies that have a crispy outside and an almost cake-like consistency on the inside. So as part of my ongoing baking experiments I will try to perfect the recipe (at least in my mind). Is it possible? I hope so!
So far the main recipes I've used are Alton Brown's
recipe for chewy cookies and the Big Chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe from America's Test Kitchen's family cookbook.
One of the main differences I've noticed between different recipes is the butter. Not necessarily the amount, but how it is incorporated into the cookie batter. Some recipes call for softened butter, while others recommend melted butter. Butter, is a fat (of course) and it is used in cookie recipes to add moisture, flavor (mmm butter), and a golden brown and delicious color. If you incorporate solid butter (even if creamed) into the batter, it will melt while baking causing the cookie to spread. However, if you melt the butter prior to incorporating it into the batter, the cookie won't flatten out into greasy disks in the oven, and they'll maintain a nice, thick body which is what we're going for!
Another thing I've noticed with my cookies is the type of color you can achieve by varying the brown sugar as well as the amount of time you spend creaming the egg mixture with the sugars and vanilla. For this latest recipe I used dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar and got a more golden brown color to my cookies as opposed to a lighter looking cookie (which I've had in the past). The dark brown sugar will also increase the moisture (which should lead to a chewier texture) in the cookie. I also feel that if you stop creaming the egg (plus butter and sugar) mixture as soon as it starts to turn lighter brown (which it will if you cream it for longer than a minute) you can preserve this nicer (in my opinion) color to your cookie.
For my latest batch of cookies I substituted bread flour for all-purpose flour (and used melted buttered instead of softened) and used the Test Kitchen recipe once again. I feel like the slightly heavier flour made the flavor and consistency a bit better than my previous batch of cookies. From what I've read about flour, I've learned that unbleached flour should not retain as much moisture as bleached all-purpose flour and would therefore have a stiffer consistency within the cookie (less cake-like). Also, bread flour has a higher protein content, and so it has the potential to form more gluten... which should lead to chewiness! That seems to be the case with my cookies; yet we're still getting a tiny hint of cakiness in them.
I have other variables I'd like to play with in my future attempts:
Mixing Method: After doing a little more research, (I enjoy Alton Brown's baking
book) I've learned that the real goal of the creaming method (which is to cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy before mixing in the dry ingredients) is to aerate the batter. The method introduces many evenly micro-sized bubbles into the batter leading to light, fluffy, and cake-like batters. Which sounds wonderful for a cake, but not so great if we're trying to make a chewy cookie! Instead, I'd like to try "The Muffin Method." The muffin method is just throwing everything in the bowl at once (dry and wet ingredients) and mixing until just combined (even leaving some lumps). Hopefully this will create the texture we want.
Salt: The basic recipe that I've been using calls for about a 1/2 tsp of salt. Though, when doing some research on other cookie recipes I've found that 1 1/2 tsp of salt with a smaller amount of flour will do (check this
recipe out from the NY Times). I feel my cookies need a little more salt. In fact, sprinkling a bit of salt on the tops of the dough balls before baking seems to really enhance their flavor. It may sound odd, but we tried it last night, and they were pretty delicious! The goal isn't to make the cookie taste salty, but for the salt to enhance the overall taste of the cookie.
Oats: I'd like to try to add crushed or ground oats into the mixture. I don't want to make an oatmeal cookie, but I am looking to add some of that crispy, crunchy texture. I have had cookies that have feature oats (or some sort of bran) in them and they were delicious. I just need to figure out the proper proportion of dry ingredients to wet (perhaps in weighing the ingredients I could do this...luckily I just purchased a nice new kitchen scale).
Pudding: I'd like to try to add pudding mix to the batter. In the past, I've made pudding cookies that melt in your mouth. If I could apply that same concept to my chewy chocolate chip cookie without making them too moist and crumbly, we could have a winner! Pudding cookies themselves tend to fall apart easily and are really soft...but perhaps just a small amount of pudding in the batter would work in our case.
Butter: Perhaps with the butter we could try half melted and half solid to get an in-between affect. It would keep the outside crisp and perhaps the inside less cake-like. It's worth experimenting with.
So I think the next plan of attack is to try to alter the mixing method and up the salt to a full teaspoon before altering anything else...I feel like the ingredient list is pretty solid. We'll be sure to update with our latest results as soon as we're done with our small break from eating cookies every day!
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