Chocolate Chip Off the Old Block

A few months ago, I promised my younger sister that I would help her learn how to make an awesome chocolate chip cookie.  I have spend nearly every Saturday and Sunday over the last two months making multiple batches of said baked goods, all in an effort to develop the best CCC I could.  I used other people recipes, I adapted popular recipes, tried different flour, tried different fats, sugars, methods, temperatures, baking times. 

Today, I FINALLY did it.  I made the CCC’s I remember from my youth.  Now all I need is that round, flat 70′s avocado Tupperware container with the yellow ridged lid to put said cookies in, and my trip down confectionary memory lane will be complete.  (Including my preference for water instead of milk with my cookies, because I used to be allergic to milk and still don’t like it very much…except on cereal.)  I made batches that were good, but ugly.  I made one batch that I actually threw out entirely because they were so bad.  I tried new tools, went through eight bags of chocolate chips, and made my co-workers simultaneously love and despise me. 

These little cookies are perfect.  They look identical to the ones in the picture to the left (I didn’t want to haul out my camera and retouch a photo, so I just stole a picture from the internet), they’re slightly crunchy/chewy on the outside and soft in the middle.  They’ve got a very nice vanilla caramel flavor, and the chocolate has managed to stay somewhat soft, even after the cookies have cooled.  The crust is the perfect shade of Golden Brown (or “Golden Brown and Delicious” as Alton Brown would say) with the little cracks and crevices that just scream “I’m a perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie!”  Not to oversell them, though.

This little experiment has been a learning experience, and is fairly typical of the way I approach things I want to master.  I read like crazy, learn the theory, and then experiment until I get it right.  Had I come to the conclusion that a degree in Music Dance Theatre is even more worthless than the paper it is printed on far sooner in my life, I may have been able to pursue a path in science.  I think I would have been good at it. I feel like I have a solid enough grounding on the science of cookie making that I could start inventing my own cookie recipes.  I won’t, but I could. 

And now?  Now I’m not going to tell you.

I know, I’m a bastage.

No, I will tell you all…eventually.  But there’s two reasons why I can’t yet.  First, I need to have someone at a higher elevation try out the cookie recipe to make sure that it works at, say, 4500 feet above sea level.  I’d like to make sure it really is a fail-proof recipe, but as I’m only a couple hundred feet above sea level, I need to make sure the recipe is too finely tuned to my elevation.  (It makes a huge difference, you know).  Secondly, it’s late, I just had a full-blown sugar crash, and I’m going to go to bed because I need to go to work tomorrow and take my last batch of chocolate chip cookies to work to be disseminated amongst my colleagues.  And I will say this:  I don’t want to eat another Chocolate Chip Cookie for a long, long time.

Until then, just know this: My cookie recipe is better than yours.  So there.  Pbbbbth.