Tag: Chocolate Chip

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

November 11, 2012February 4, 2017

When you have found possibly the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever, it is hard to find recipes for chocolate chip cookies that still inspire you. You know what I mean? It’s like, well I found the best ones, so why not just make those? I’ll tell you why: while they are delicious, they require buying fancy chocolate (instead of just using the perfectly good chocolate chips you already have in your kitchen) and sifting. I’ll sift for Thomas Keller, but only so often.

So when I wanted to make cookies a while ago but not the fanciest best ones ever, I went to one of my favorite (food) blogs: Orangette. I have used this blog before, but I have re-fallen in love with it since reading the author’s book, A Homemade Life. Now, I feel that Molly Wizenberg and I were meant to be friends, and I am determined to make it happen. If you like reading about food, I definitely suggest it. There are also recipes in it, so if you don’t like the story, you can at least make some delicious food. Anyway, she had this recipe for whole wheat chocolate chip cookies that just looked so simple and divine… So I made them.

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

3 cups whole wheat flour
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
1 ½ tsp. kosher salt
2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes
1 cup lightly packed dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped into ¼- and ½-inch pieces, or bittersweet chips

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or just butter them. Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a bowl. Set aside.

Put the butter and sugars in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (if you’ve got it. If you don’t, I advise bringing your butter to room temperature before you mix it). Bring the mixer up to a lower speed and mix JUST until the butter and sugars are blended (this should take about 2 minutes if your butter is cold). Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after adding each one. Add the vanilla, mix. Now add the flour mixture, and mix on a low speed until it is just mixed (have you noticed a key with this recipe is not over-mixing it? Honestly, that goes for most recipes. But moving on…) Add in your chocolate and mix. This is where it gets tricky, as the dough is fairly dry. Just do the best you can.

Using a spoon, put ~3 Tbl. sized scoops of dough on the cookie sheet, leaving plenty of room between the cookies (I would say at least 2 inches, 3 to be safe). Mine didn’t spread as much as the ones on Orangette, but always better safe than sorry. Bake for 16 to 20 minutes, rotating the sheets halfway through, until the cookies are evenly browned. I have found, when it comes to baking cookies, that I need to take the cookies out of the oven sooner than I think I do… I have a tendency to over-bake. Transfer the cookies to a rack to cool. Enjoy with a nice glass of cold milk.

World Peace Cookies (or Extremely Chocolate Cookies)

April 21, 2012February 2, 2017

One of my favorite care packages that I got in college was from my dad. It arrived the week before finals, and included all kinds of stuff to help get me through the very stressful time: chocolate covered coffee beans to help with the all nighters, delicious tea to help me fight off illness, dried fruit and other healthy snacks to keep me going during the long days, etc. It made me feel so much better about all the work I had to do, and made it feel like he was there, pushing me to get everything done and do the best I could.

Anyway, so I was thinking about my baby sister, who is about to enter finals week. And she’s had a bit of a rough semester, with some health issues (she may have to haver her tonsils out this summer, ouch) and all kinds of yuck-o stuff. And I thought, you know what would make her feel better? A care package full of funny and delicious things to help her get through the toughest part of the school year. Plus, let’s face it, I’ll take any excuse I can get to make cookies. I’d been eyeing this recipe from Smitten Kitchen for these chocolate cookies called “World Peace Cookies.” Apparently the title is based on the idea that if everyone in the world had these cookies, there would be peace. And they are pretty dang good.

World Peace Cookies

Ingredients

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 stick plus 3 Tbl unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tsp fleur de sel or 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or a generous 3/4 cup store-bought mini chocolate chips

Instructions

Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together into a bowl. Set aside. In an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both the brown and granulated sugars, the salt, and the vanilla extract before beating for another couple of minutes.

Turn off the mixer. Pour in the flour/cocoa mixture and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time. (A nice trick when pulsing flour and or cocoa: cover the bowl with a dishtowel, draped over the mixer, to protect yourself from inhaling the ingredients and to protect your kitchen from a total mess.) If, after a few pulses, there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of times more. After everything is all mixed in, continue mixing on a low speed for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough. As with anything with lots of butter, you want to work the dough as little as possible. Don’t worry, the dough will be crumbly. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix to incorporate.

Dump the dough out onto a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half. One half at a time, shape the dough into logs about an inch and a half in diameter. Wrap them in plastic wrap and stick them in the fridge for at least 3 hours. Towards the end of the three hours, you can preheat your oven to 325 degrees. Line your baking sheets with parchment, silpats, or just grease them lightly like I did.

Pull the logs out of the fridge, unwrap, and with a sharp knife, slice them into 1/2-inch thick rounds. They may crumble: don’t worry, just squeeze the bits back together. Put the rounds on a baking sheet, leaving about an inch in between them. Bake for about 12 minutes. They won’t look that done, but they are. I promise. Allow to cool on the sheet for at least a couple minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. Good luck letting them cool all the way before munching on a few accompanied by a glass of cold milk. Yum.

Thomas Keller’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

February 2, 2012February 1, 2017

You know how everyone is always on the hunt for the best chocolate chip cookie? When I was younger, our family friend Anita was known for making the best chocolate chip cookies around. Whenever we went over to her house we (my sisters and I) were excited because we knew we would get those delicious cookies. Despite staying close to her family, I do not have her cookie recipe… Odd.

Anyway, the other day I felt like baking (strange, huh?) and Jonah requested classic chocolate chip. I wanted to do a variation, like those thyme and sea salt chocolate chunk cookies I made a while back. But after having no luck finding anything before heading to the store, I remembered Thomas Keller having a recipe for chocolate chip cookies in the Ad Hoc cookbook. I figured, “Hey, that guy kind of knows what he’s doing,” so I pulled out the recipe and went to the store.

I will tell you now that these are possibly the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had (besides Anita’s). You know the great debate: Crunchy or chewy? These are perfectly both. They are crispy on the edges (thanks to our old friend, butter) and chewy and soft in the middle. Oh my goodness. And they spread out when they bake, so they’re pretty big, which makes you feel like you’re really getting a good portion of cookie when you eat one. And if one seems large enough to be satisfying, you would think it’d be easier to not eat like 10 of them. But it’s not. You just get more full.

Side note: Jonah bought me these wonderful baking sheets for Christmas. The brand is Chicago Metallic; they came in a package with two pans and a cooling rack. These pans need no liner or greasing. Nothing EVER sticks to them (knock on wood). They are heavy duty with a wire around the edge so they don’t warp, and industrial-kitchen sized. I love them. I highly recommend them if you’re looking for new pans.

Thomas Keller’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

2 1/3 cups plus 1 Tbl all-purpose flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
5 oz. semi-sweet chocolate (think 55%), cut into chip sized pieces (about 1 1/4 cups)
5 oz. dark chocolate (think 70-72%), cut into chip sized pieces (about 1 1/4 cups)
2 sticks cold unsalted butter
1 cup brown sugar (preferably dark)
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper (or just grease them a little bit).

Ok, sorry. Now, sift the flour and baking soda into a medium bowl, and stir in the salt. Usually if a recipe says to sift flour, I ignore it, but I had a lot of time on my hands, and hey, I’m not gonna ignore Thomas Keller. I would say that it made a difference. Put the chips of chocolate you’ve cut in a fine mesh basket strainer to get out all the “chocolate dust.”

Using an electric mixer with the paddle attachment, beat half of the butter (1 stick that has been cut up into small pieces) until it’s smooth and creamy. Now add the sugars and the rest of the butter (also cut into small pieces) and beat until well combined and creamy. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well between them. Be sure during all of this to be scraping down the sides of the bowl to get everything well-incorporated. Now add the dry ingredients and mix them in.

Thoroughly fold in the chocolate chips. It’s a little tricky because the dough is really thick, but stick with it, it’s worth it. You wouldn’t want those cookies from the bottom of the bowl to not have any chocolate in them, would you? No. No you would not. At this point you can wrap the dough up and refrigerate it for up to 5 days or freeze it for 2 weeks. But I just don’t understand, you’ve gotten this far, why would you not just make the damn cookies at this point?

If you’re continuing on, take about 2 tablespoons of dough, roll into a ball, and place it on the cookie sheet. You only want to put about 8 on a sheet because these suckers need their space. They spread out for real. Leave 2 inches between each ball of dough. Bake for 12 minutes, turning the cookie sheet halfway through baking. Let the cookies cool on the pan for a couple minutes before removing them to a cooling rack to cool the rest of the way (if you can wait that long). Enjoy with a glass of cold milk.