Tessa Arias, Chef and Cookbook Author
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In this post I’m going to share with you how various ingredients and techniques can affect the taste, texture, and appearance of your chocolate chip cookies. This will hopefully help you understand how a Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe works so you can make the PERFECT batch every time, whatever you consider to be perfect. This information will allow you to alter or create your own chocolate chip recipe that produces cookies just the way YOU like them. You’ll be an expert on the anatomy of the chocolate chip cookie.
I used the Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe as my control and made little changes and variations in techniques and ingredients to show you how they affect the cookie.
I halved and adapted the original Tollhouse recipe. I kept everything the same through each recipe test, changing just one key thing to see its effect and photographing the results for you.
Cookie Tools and Ingredients Used:
Tools and Ingredients Used (when applicable):
-Spring-Loaded Cookie Scoop (Medium or 1 1/2-Tablespoon size)
–Chicago Metallic sheet pans
–Escali Digital Food Scale
–KitchenAid 5-quart Stand Mixer
–Oven thermometer
–Unbleached parchment paper
-Gold Medal All-Purpose Flour
-Fine sea salt
-Light brown sugar
-Large eggs
-Unsalted butter at a cool room temperature
Control Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (142 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick (113 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (75 grams) granulated sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons (75 grams) packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 large egg
1 cup (170 grams) semi sweet chocolate chips
Directions:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line baking sheets with nonstick baking mats or parchment paper.
In a medium bowl combine the flour, baking soda, and salt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer beat the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar until creamy, about 2 minutes. Add the egg and vanilla, beating well to combine. Gradually beat in the flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chips. Scoop 1 1/2 tablespoon-sized balls and place onto prepared baking sheets.
Bake for 9 to 11 minutes, or until golden brown. Cool for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
Here is the control, an adapted version of the Nestle Tollhouse recipe. The full recipe I used to base all of the tweaks on is at the bottom of this post.
Baking Powder:
Removed baking soda from recipe and used 1/2 teaspoon baking powder. This produced results that were more cakey and puffed while baking.
Baking Powder AND Baking Soda:
Used 1/4 teaspoon baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon baking soda. This produced results that were crisp at the edges, soft in the middle, with a good amount of spread. The combination of the two leaveners produced the best results in my opinion.
MORE Flour:
Increased the flour to 2 cups (250 grams) which created a more crumbly dough and very little spread. The cookies were small yet thick and relatively undercooked (ooey and gooey) in the middle.
MELTED Butter:
I replaced the room temperature butter with melted and cooled butter. Instead of creaming the butter and sugar with an electric mixer, I simply stirred the butter and sugars together then let sit for 5 minutes, until the sugar was better absorbed by the butter. This produced flatter cookies that had a shiny, crackled top reminiscent of brownies. They were also more crisp at the edges.
All Granulated Sugar:
I used 3/4 cup granulated sugar (150 grams) in this recipe which produced flat, white, chewy, and slightly crunchy cookies but with little flavor. Since baking soda (called for in the control recipe) requires an acid (such as brown sugar) to react, these cookies fell very flat as you can see by the way the chocolate chips protrude.
All Brown Sugar:
I used 3/4 cup (150 grams) packed light brown sugar in this recipe which produced thick, brown, and soft cookies with an intense butterscotch flavor. The original control recipe uses an even ratio of granulated and brown sugars. If you prefer your cookies to be flatter, chewier, or crisper, use more granulated sugar. If you prefer your cookies to be softer and thicker and have a pronounced butterscotch flavor, use more brown sugar.
24-hour CHILLED Dough:
I used the control recipe but chilled it in the fridge for about 24 hours before shaping and baking. This produced cookies that were slightly thicker, chewier, darker, and with a better depth of butterscotch flavor. If you have time, try chilling your next cookie dough for at least 24 hours, or up to 48 hours.
Final Comparison:
Whoops ^^ FLOUR! lol
Have you tried the NY Times Best Chocolate Cookie recipe? It uses both kinds of sugar and 2 types of flower. Also, calls for 24-72 hour chilling period. They. Are. INCREDIBLE!
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/091crex.html?_r=0
I’ve always wondered how using cake flour AND bread flour affects the cookies – they seem to cancel each other out in my mind if that makes sense. Will definitely be trying out different flours for part II 🙂
I’m supposed to be cleaning and packing for a family trip, but now I want to stop and make a batch of cookies instead. We can always take them on the plane, right? Thanks for this interesting experiment! It explains so many of my cookie “failures.” Oh, and the one with extra flour looks super yummy to me.
Love the tests you conducted. I use half butter shortening and half unsalted butter plus 1 tbsp water. I also scoop my cookie balls and freeze on cookie trays, then store them in baggies so I can bake as many or little as I want at anytime. The cookies turn out fantastic!
When I was growing up we didn’t use butter for baking, it was too expensive. We used Crisco shortening. What affect might that have had? Always used both brown and white sugar. Cookies were always good and didn’t spread out.
Please change the first two instances of “effect” to “affect.”
Thanks for catching that!
Genius!! I’ve always wondered why my cookies seem to turn out differently every time!! Bookmarking this now to refer back to it next I’m in the baking mood 🙂
Have you tried 1/2 shortening and 1/2 butter? Crispy on the outer edges…soft inside,
you should try adding 1 tsp corn starch to a batch. Helps them to be thicker and stay soft.
Smiles
D
So were all of your tests measured by weight, then just translated to volume for recipe purposes?
That’s correct. Additionally, the original Nestle recipe is written by volume and that was my control. However, you bring up a good point. Since this is somewhat of a serious baking test I went ahead and edited the post to include weight measurements of the flour as well as the original volume. Thanks for your comment!
I find it hard to believe that someone who is so serious about their cookie tests, measures their flour by volume (instead of by weight).
Hi Brian – when I bake at home I usually measure by weight but most of my readers don’t own a kitchen scale and aren’t familiar with baking by weight. I write the recipes on this blog for my readers and try to make them as simple as possible.
Yes, I’m with Desiree – which one was best?