At the beginning of the year, I declared it the YEAR OF CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES on Planet Byn. In keeping with my kitchen procrastination tendencies, it then took me four months to try another recipe, but here we are.

For my first venture outside of My Favourite, I went with a Cook’s Illustrated’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Have you ever seen this magazine? My Mom used to have a few issues, and I didn’t understand it. It’s in black and white! There are no big, glossy pictures! But the thing is, CI tests the shizz out of their recipes before publishing them, so I figured they would be a good place to start.

The main difference in their recipe is the butter: not cold, not room temperature, not even just melted, but browned. There are also a lot of “whisk, wait, repeat” steps that add extra time. Everything else is pretty much status quo, except I stepped up my chocolate and instead of using Chipits, bought some Valrhona dark chocolate chunks.

So what’s the verdict on the final product? They fit all of my CCC specs: thick, chewy, and full of chocolate. BUT for all the extra steps you have to go to, I don’t think they’re any better than Anna Olson’s recipe, which you can mix up in probably less than half the time. I also strongly feel that the flavour of the browned butter is lost once they’re baked.

I think I’m going to tackle the New York Times version next, because Deb just revisited the recipe and they look insane.

Cook’s Illustrated’s Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies

Source: The Way The Cookie Crumbles via Cook’s Illustrated

Ingredients

14 tbsp (1 3/4 sticks) butter, divided

3/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 tsp salt

1 egg

1 egg yolk

1 3/4 cups flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/4 cups chocolate chips or chunks

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 375° and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a small saucepan, brown 10 tbsp of butter (see here for tutorial on how to brown butter), then pour into a large bowl, being sure to scrape out all the brown bits. Add the last 4 tbsp of room temperature butter to the melted butter, and stir until fully melted.
3. Add brown sugar, sugar, vanilla and salt and whisk to combine. Add egg and egg yolk and whisk until smooth, 30 seconds. Let rest for 3 minutes, then whisk for 30 seconds. Repeat this two more times.
4. Stir in the flour and baking soda until incorporated, then stir in chocolate.
5. Divide dough into 16 portions and roll into balls. Place 8 balls on each cookie sheet. Bake one sheet at a time for 10-14 minutes (I baked for 12 minutes), making sure they don’t get too brown.