With so many chocolate chip cookie recipes out there, I wouldn’t dare proclaim this the best one. But these cookies have many things going for them: crisp, caramelized edges and fudgy, craggy centers, balanced with a hit of salt. Built around one stick of butter and a single egg, it’s easily scalable, putting a double or triple batch within arm’s reach. While this cookie is influenced by many of its predecessors, it diverges most notably by upping the vanilla and scaling back on the chocolate. Chopped chocolate leads to striations in the dough and a variety of pleasing textures.
Notes:
For best results, use a baking scale and couverture chocolate (in the 55–65 percent cacao range), and rest the dough overnight. A longer time in the fridge allows the dough to fully hydrate, leading to more pronounced notes of vanilla and caramel and less spread, but they are very enjoyable after two hours of chilling time. I often bake however many I want to consume that day after the two-hour mark—because a warm chocolate chip cookie is a good chocolate chip cookie—and then portion the rest (placing them in the fridge on a baking sheet for 30 minutes to harden) and store them in a freezer bag or airtight container. When baking from the freezer, make sure to add a minute or two to the total time.
Directions
- Combine the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, kosher salt), whisk together, and set aside.
- Chop the chocolate into irregularly sized pieces (1/8–3/4 inch) and set aside.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle, beat the butter until creamy, about a minute. Add the cane and light brown sugars and continue to cream for 3–4 minutes, until mixture is light and fluffy. Scrape down the bowl every 30–45 seconds or so to ensure even mixing.
- Add the egg and mix until it is evenly dispersed, followed by the vanilla extract.
- Add roughly half of the flour mixture to the mixer and stir until just barely combined.
- Mix chopped chocolate pieces into the remaining bowl of dry ingredients and stir to disperse.
- Add the leftover dry ingredients and chocolate to the mixer and stir until just barely combined (no visible streaks of flour, but the dough is still a shaggy mass).
- Remove the bowl, cover, and place in the fridge for at least 2 and up to 48 hours.
- Once you’re ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350ºF, and remove the dough from the fridge.
- Portion dough into 50g balls (let the dough soften for a few minutes to make it easier to scoop, if you’re doing this after 24 hours).
- Place dough balls onto parchment-lined baking sheet, spacing about 2 inches apart, and bake until golden brown around the edges, 8–10 minutes.
- Remove from oven, sprinkle with flaky salt, and cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before placing cookies on a wire rack. Transferring cookies with a thin spatula helps maintain their shape.
- Cool to room temperature or eat immediately. Store cooled cookies in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Kaitlin Bray
Kaitlin Bray is the director of Audience Development at TASTE and PUNCH. She has a masters degree in Food Studies from NYU, where she researched sustainable food systems. You can find her previous work on Food52.