The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

We set out to perfect the back-of-the-bag classic with a cookie that was crisp at the
edges, chewy in the middle, and full of rich toffee flavor.
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back of chocolate chip bags in 1939, generations of cooks have packed them into
lunches, taken them to bake sales, and kept them on hand for snackingarguably
more so than any ot
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years. The recipe is so easy: Cream butter and sugar (half white and half brown),
add two eggs and vanilla, then mix in all-purpose flour, salt, baking soda, some
chopped nuts, and the chips. Drop tablespoons of dough on a cookie sheet, bake at
350
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appeal. But is it really the best that a choco- late chip cookie can be? In my opinion, a
truly great cookie offers real complexity, not just a one-note sweet taste and
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and chewy on the inside and crisp at the edges, with deep notes of toffee and
butterscotch to balance its sweetness. What would it take to achieve the perfect
specimen?
Not-So-Cookie-Cutter Techniques
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Not too long ago, The New York Times published a recipe inspired by famed New
York City pastry chef Jacques Torres trumpeting an unusual tactic for creat- ing
more complex flavor in a chocolate chip cookie: resting the dough a full 24 hours
before baking. The rest enables the flour to fully absorb moisture from the eggs,
leading to drier dough that caramelizes more quickly in the oven and achieves
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did have a slightly deeper toffee taste than the Toll House cookiebut not nearly
enough to warrant the inconvenience of a 24-hour rest.
Several Boston-area bakeries employ their own dough-resting techniques,
some of them even more drastic: At Flour Bakery in the South End, chef Joanne
Chang swears by a rest of two or even three days. Clear Flour Bread, near our offices
in Brookline, portions the dough and freezes it before baking, a trick that helps
prevent the dough from spreading too much (and that keeps the center of the cookie
moist and chewy). Fine ideas for professional kitchensbut who at home wants to
wait two days to bake or try jamming even one cookie sheet into the freezer?
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milk powder to the Toll House dough. Tosi finds it brings depth to her baked goods;
I found it just made the cookies taste milky. I also experimented with a slew of even
less likely additives, includ- ing tapioca powder, brown rice flour, and xanthan
gumall suggestions for ensuring chewier texture. In each case, tasters were
unanimous: No, thanks.
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increasing crispness from the Toll House creator herself, Ruth Wakefield, seemed

worth trying: In a variation on her chocolate chip cookie recipe published in Toll
House Tried and True Recipes (1940), Wakefield swaps all-purpose flour for cake
flour. But the swap yielded a cookie so crumbly that it practically disintegrated after
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all-purpose flour (10 to 12 percent). Protein is one of the building blocks of gluten,
which gives baked goods their structure. The less protein, the less structure, and the
more crumbly the end product.
Examining the Elements
It was time to come up with my own ideas. Since small tweaks in a baking
recipe can translate to big differences, I would break down the Toll House rec- ipe
into its main components and see what changes I could invoke by playing around
with ingredients and proportions.
I decided to start by tackling texture, first zeroing in on the impact of the fat. I
already knew I wanted to stick with buttervegetable shortening and oil could
never compete with its rich flavor. The Toll House recipe calls for creaming the
butter with the sugar, which creates tiny air bubbles that bring a cakey lift to
cookies. Developing a recipe for Brown Sugar Cookies (March/April 2007), I
discovered that melting the butter before combining it with the other ingredients
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butter melts, the water separates from the fat and can then interact with the
proteins in flour to create more structure-enhancing gluten. Melting the two sticks
of butter called for in the Toll House recipe created a relative abundance of water
(more than 3 tablespoons), for cookies that tasters found notice- ably chewier.
Since I was melting butter, I saw an opportunity to brown it, a technique we often
use in the test kitchen to add nutty flavors to food. Sure enough, it worked here as
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brown all of it.
Next ingredient under the microscope: sugar. Besides adding sweetness,
sugar affects texture. White sugar granules lend crispness, while brown sugar,
which is hygroscopic (meaning it attracts and retains water, mainly from the air),
enhances chewiness. All that moisture sounded like a good thingtoo good, in fact.
Cookies from the all- brown-sugar batch I baked were beyond chewy; they were so
moist, they were nearly floppy. The Toll House recipe calls for an equal amount of
white and brown sugar; I got the best results when I simply upped the brown sugar
(tasters preferred dark for its deeper flavor) to 60 percent and knocked the
granulated down to 40 percent.
Next came flour. I had already seen how cake flour, with its low protein
content, yields a crunchy, crumbly cookie. What if I took the opposite tack and tried
bread flour, with its higher protein con- tent of 12 to 14 percent? Again, this was
going too far: The cookies were so dense and chewy that they were breadlike. In the
end, just cutting back on the ally 12
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cookies and allowed the chewiness contributed by the brown sugar to come to the
fore. The only problem: With less flour, the cookies were a little greasy. To resolve
the issue, I decreased the butter by 2 tablespoons.

Finally, I was ready to evaluate the role of eggs in my batter. I knew from experience
that egg whites, which contain much of the protein in the egg, tend to create cakey
texture in baked goods
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ies bake, any white that
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leave a cookie crumbly. Eliminating one egg white was the right way to go, resulting
in cookies that were supremely moist and chewy.
Waiting for Better Flavor
I had achieved chewiness, but what about my other goals? The crisp edges
and deep toffee flavor were still missing, and short of melting candy into the dough,
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along.
In the middle of stirring together the butter, sugar, and eggs, I stopped to
take a phone call. Ten minutes later, I found the sugars had dissolved and the
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pulled the finished cookies from the oven. Instead of the smooth, matte surface of
the previous batches, these cookies emerged with a slightly glossy sheen and an
alluring surface of cracks and crags. One bite revealed a rush of deep, toffeelike
flavor. Mysteriously, these cook- ies finally had just the texture I was aiming for:
crisp on the outside and chewy within. When I made the cookies bigger (3
tablespoons versus the rounded tablespoon called for in the Toll House recipe), the
contrast was even greater.
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e editor onto the case. His
theory was that by allowing the sugar to rest in the liquids, more of it dissolved in
the small amount of moisture before baking. The dissolved sugar caramelizes more
easily, creating a spectrum of toffee flavors and influencing texture. When sugar
dissolved in water is heated, the moisture burns off and its molecules break apart,
creating a brittle, amorphous structure that translates to crisper texture. But that
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moisture on the perimeter disappears, the remaining moisture becomes
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Now all that was left was finessing the baking time and temperature. With
caramelization in mind, I kept the temperature hot, 375 degreesthe same as for
Toll House cookies. Watching carefully, I left the cookies in the oven until they were
golden brown, just set at the edges, and soft in the center, between 10 and 14
minutes.
I sat down with a tall glass of milk and a sample from my weeks of labor and
more than 700 cookies baked. My cookie was crisp and chewy, gooey with
chocolate, with a complex medley of sweet, buttery, caramel, and toffee flavors.
Perfection is a subjective judgment at best, so I held one more blind tasting, pitting
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betterthey were perfect.
PERFECT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
MAKES 16 COOKIES

Note: Avoid using a nonstick skillet to brown the butter; the dark color of the
nonstick coating makes it difficult to gauge when the butter is browned. Use fresh,
moist brown sugar instead of hardened brown sugar, which will make the cookies
dry. This recipe works with light brown sugar, but the cook- ies will be less fullflavored. For our winning brand of chocolate chips, see page 29.
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1 teaspoon table salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract 1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
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1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 375 degrees. Line 2 large
(18- by 12- inch) baking sheets with parchment paper. Whisk flour and baking soda
together in medium bowl; set aside.
2. Heat 10 tablespoons butter in 10-inch skillet over medium-high heat until melted,
about 2 min- utes. Continue cooking, swirling pan constantly until butter is dark
golden brown and has nutty aroma, 1 to 3 minutes. Remove skillet from heat and,
using heatproof spatula, transfer browned butter to large heatproof bowl. Stir
remaining 4 tablespoons butter into hot butter until completely melted.
3. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla to bowl with butter and whisk until fully
incorporated. Add egg and yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth with no sugar
lumps remaining, about 30 seconds. Let mixture stand 3 minutes, then whisk for 30
seconds. Repeat process of resting and whisking 2 more times until mixture is thick,
smooth, and shiny. Using rub- ber spatula or wooden spoon, stir in flour mixture
until just combined, about 1 minute. Stir in choco- late chips and nuts (if using),
giving dough final stir to ensure no flour pockets remain.
4. Divide dough into 16 portions, each about 3 tablespoons (or use #24 cookie
scoop). Arrange 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheets, 8 dough balls per sheet.
(Smaller baking sheets can be used, but will require 3 batches.)
5. Bake cookies 1 tray at a time until cookies are golden brown and still puffy, and
edges have begun to set but centers are still soft, 10 to 14 minutes, rotating baking
sheet halfway through baking. Transfer baking sheet to wire rack; cool cookies
completely before serving.
TECHNIQUE | MEASURE IT RIGHT
Even a tablespoon too much or too little flour can have an im
how to measure accurately.

PREFERRED:
WEIGH FLOUR
For the greatest accuracy, weigh flour before using it. Put a bowl on a scale, hit the

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SECOND-BEST:
DIP AND SWEEP
Dip a dry measuring cup into the flour, sweeping away excess flour with a flat edge.
This method yields more accurate results than spooning flour into a measuring cup.
science experiment
For Perfect Cookies,
Look to Sugar
Crunchy edges, chewy centers, and big butterscotch flavorsthat chocolate chip
cookie framework sounded pretty sweet to us. As it turns out, perfect cookies have a
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ing caramelizes more readily than sugar that simply melts when exposed to the
same amount of heat. What would happen if we rested our cookie batter after we
added the sugar to allow more of it to dis- solve before going into the oven?
EXPERIMENT
We prepared two batches of our Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies. Dough from the
first batch went straight from the mixing bowl onto the baking sheet; the other
batch rested for 10 minutes (with occasional whisking) after we combined the sugar
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RESULTS
Cookies baked from the rested batter boasted not only richer, deeper flavor but also
crisper edges.
EXPLANATION
Dissolving the sugar in liquid provided by the melted butter, vanilla, and egg
(accelerated by whisking and resting) affects both flavor and texture. Dissolved
sugar breaks down more quickly from crystalline sucrose into glucose and fructose,
which caramel- ize at a lower temperature to form many rich, new flavor
compounds. As the dissolved, caramelized sugar cools, it takes on a brittle structure.
In our cookies, this brittle texture is more evident at the edges. Why? As the oven
burns off moisture from the cookie perimeter, the remaining moisture gets pulled
into the center, keeping it chewy. C.K.
equipment testing
Innovative Mixing Bowls
Made of classic stainless steel or heat-resistant glass, our mixing bowls are kitchen
workhorses, indispens- able for everything from mixing cookie dough to making
pancake batter to jury-rigging a double boiler to melt chocolate. Yet they have their
shortcomings: They wobble as you mix, the rim can make pouring a mess, and metal
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tested nine models in glass, plastic, metal, and silicone, with features such as

silicone- or rubber-lined bottoms to prevent skidding and handles and spouts to

make pouring easier. Only one was a true improvement over the old classics. For
complete testing results, go to www.cooksillustrated.com/jun09.
Peggy Chung Collier
RECIPE TESTING
D Bake in Batches
Baking two trays at a time may be convenient, but it leads to uneven cooking. The
cookies on the top tray are often browner around the edges than those on the
bottom, even when rotated halfway through cooking.
MIXING MASTER
PYREX Grip-Rite
5-Quart Teardrop
Mixing Bowl
Price: $16.99
Comments: Silicone
strips around the base grip the counter firmly, and the teardrop shape, spout, and
handle allow for
neat pouring, making this bowl a real winner.
SPACE SAVER
PROGRESSIVE
5-Quart Collapsible Bowl
Price: $11.30
Comments: This second-place bowl, made of plastic and silicone, collapses to a
space-saving 2. I wd
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dy- but not microwave safe.
TOO WOBBLY
iSi BASICS Flex It 2-Quart Mixing Bowl Price: $18
Comments: You can squeeze this seventh-ranked, microwave-safe silicone bowl to
form a spout, but it seemed flimsy and wobbled during mixing.