How to Make The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
The “best” chocolate chip cookie is such a subjective concept. For me, it has to have a golden, crispy exterior and a soft, chewy interior with just enough melty, slightly bitter chocolate chips to balance the sweetness of the dough.
Because everyone has their own perfect chocolate chip cookie in mind, I won’t claim to have the ultimate recipe. What I can offer is a scientific breakdown of how different ingredients and techniques influence the results so you can bake your own version of perfection.
Before we dive into ingredients and ratios, here are two foundational techniques. Number one: Use a scale. For ingredients that compact, like flour, my scooped cup might be tens of grams more than your scooped cup, a difference that could lead to a dry and hard cookie instead of a chewy one. No bueno.
Second: Get empirical and eliminate the guesswork that comes with descriptions like “room temperature butter” creamed until “light and fluffy.” Um, how warm is your room? And do they mean fluffy like a kitten? The creaming step is often described in whimsical terms despite being measurable. Butter should be 16 to 18C (colder butter will be fudgy and won’t cream; warmer will get airy but then collapse) and beaten for a full five minutes on medium-high.
Achieve the sweet-spot butter texture and you’ll introduce a ton of air—which doesn’t conduct heat as much—into the dough. This insulation allows starch to set before the butter melts and spreads. Trapped air also lifts the cookie, ensuring a light, crisp exterior that gives way to chewy bliss. Now, let’s explore what happens when we play with ingredients and ratios.
The Factors At Play
Leaveners
Baking soda increases spread and browning by neutralizing acid in the dough. (Acid makes egg set more quickly and makes the gluten more extensible, both of which result in a thicker cookie. It also inhibits the Maillard browning reaction.) An all-baking-powder dough will result in a thicker and paler cookie.
Sugars
Sugar wears many hats. As it liquefies, it caramelizes and binds with water to inhibit gluten formation.
Decreasing sugar willy-nilly reduces moisture, browning, tenderness and spread as well as sweetness.
Brown sugar is a super-hygroscopic ingredient, meaning it draws moisture from the environment. Brown sugar makes a moister, softer cookie. (But it’s acidic, too, so the trade-off is a denser bite.)
Fats
Oil is liquid at room temperature, whereas butter firms right back up in a cooled cookie. Consider an oil-based cookie for a softer, muffin-like texture. Don’t substitute oil into a butter-based recipe–oil doesn’t cream, so you’ll end up with a greasy mess.
Butter is unparalleled when it comes to flavour, but it has a lower melting point than shortening. A shortening-based cookie spreads less before the cookie sets.
Temperature
A cookie baked at 375F will spread less than one baked at 350F, but this approach is best reserved for smaller cookies. Larger ones will have dark edges and raw middles if baked at a higher temperature.
Dough shape
A taller dough ball will spread less, as will a chilled ball. Baking cookies from frozen can result in uneven baking; a lower temperature and a longer baking time might be required to prevent the edges from burning before the middle is set. Flatten the dough balls a bit if you want more spread. You can also bang the baking sheet on the counter straight out of the oven to de-puff the cookies.
Now, ready to put that science into action? Here’s four ways of tinkering with these ingredient principles to achieve four distinct—and distinctly delicious—types of chocolate chip cookies.
This recipe uses the typical butter, sugar and flour ratios. The secret to mastering these chocolate chip cookies is in the technique. Pay attention to the temperature of the butter, and don’t skimp on the creaming time–it makes a big difference to the end result.
This recipe uses extra brown sugar and has a higher sugar-to-butter ratio. I prefer baking these cookies right after I make the dough, so there’s no need for chilling, which—yay!—means faster cookies.
These cookies remind me of a soft, fluffy muffin top. They have a pared-back ratio of fat and sugar to flour and a higher proportion of liquid ingredients, which takes them into the muffin zone. The addition of oil makes for a pillowy, tender crumb. Note: It’s best to deploy the muffin-mixing technique here–don’t overmix! Unlike classic chocolate chip cookies, these are not cookies that you want to underbake. They’re ready once the tops bounce back when lightly pressed. I have to say with some pride that they smell like Tim Hortons’ chocolate chip muffins.
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