The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies I’ve Ever Made

Perfect homemade chocolate chip cookies are like unicorns – I want to believe so much that they exist, but I’ve never pulled a perfect chocolate chip cookie out of my oven. I’ve tried in vain for many years  – I’ve made countless batches of Nestle Toll House cookies following the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips, I’ve tried all of Alton Brown’s variations (the chewy, the thin, the puffy), and I’ve taken a stab at my own creation, which is forever buried deep in the archives. All of the recipes I’ve tried are decent, but they aren’t the best, so I’ve continued the search. Just like those pesky unicorns, I’ve always believed the best chocolate chip cookie recipe was out there somewhere – I just had to find it.

Two years ago I found a recipe from The New York Times – at the time it seemed like every food blogger was writing about it: Brown-Eyed Baker, Averie Cooks, Recipe Girl, My Baking Addiction, The Cooking Actress, Two Peas and Their Pod were just a few – so, I pinned it. For two years I’ve been revisiting that recipe wondering if it could possibly live up to all the hype (or, in some cases, the non-hype). Could this recipe produce the chocolate chip cookie of my dreams?

Spoiler alert: Yes!

The New York Times chocolate chip cookie recipe (which, by the way, was adapted from a recipe made famous by famed chef Jacques Torres) is, in a word, awesome. It produces a perfectly balanced cookie – crispy around the edges and soft and chewy in the middle with plenty of melty bittersweet chocolate throughout. The texture, the nutty and complex flavor, and the general appearance of these cookies make them a winner in my book. My search is over – this recipe is a keeper.

It all starts with the dough. Both cake flour and bread flour are used – sounds like a hassle, I know, but both are important in achieving the perfect texture. Almost equal amounts of granulated sugar and brown sugar are used, which makes these cookies both crispy and chewy – plus the brown sugar brings that hint of molasses that gives the cookies a great depth of flavor.

 The batter comes together fast, but before you get to scooping and baking you need to let it chill – get ready for this – for 36 hours. This lengthy resting period enables the dough to fully absorb the butter and eggs. After 36 hours in the fridge the dough is dense and heavy (“like a brick” is how Steve described it), but a spoon and a little elbow grease is all you need to break it up so you can form it into golf-ball sized balls. The original recipes recommends scooping 3.5 ounces of dough for each ball, but I went a smaller size and eye-balled it.

Which leads to another point – this recipe is not complicated and, in fact, is quite forgiving. True-blue bakers always use a scale to measure their ingredients, but I’m more of a non-scientific/lazy baker and never use a scale. Luckily, the original recipe lists the amounts both by weight and in cups and tablespoons. I didn’t use absolute precision and the final result still looked and tasted as the original recipe said it should. No, this recipe is not complicated and the only real challenge is waiting 36 hours to bake a batch – it’s tough, but they are so worth the wait. Oh, and here’s a fun fact – did you know that the original Toll House cookie recipe included a step to chill the dough overnight before baking? It was inadvertently left off the recipe when they started printing it on the back of the chocolate chip packages. So even Ruth Graves Wakefield, the chocolate chip cookie inventor, knew that the best dough is well rested dough.

About the chocolate…

The recipe calls for some fancy chocolate that you can order from Jacques Torres or buy at Whole Foods and, according to my research, both are totally worth the cost. However, I used  Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate chips (a 10.5 ounce bag) and I was completely happy. Ghiradelli makes some pretty good chocolate plus it’s readily available at my grocery store.

So there you have it – my life is forever changed.

These are the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever made.

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