So, regular readers of my blog have heard me go on about my quest to develop the ultimate chocolate chip cookie recipe.  Over the last several months, I’ve made approximately 16 different recipes for chocolate chip cookies, including several of my own variation, in an effort to find a fail-proof recipe.  I’ve read books, surfed internet sites, and developed a recipe and technique that have worked wonders.  So, now that I have given the recipe away as a gift (along with all of the necessary kitchen gadgetry) for Christmas, I will now share my Ultimate C3 recipe with you.  I started with the classic Toll House recipe as a basis for my variation, and changed the chemistry of the dough slightly to improve flavor, consistency, and most of all, reliability of the recipe.  By way of a fair warning, if you’re not into the science behind baking, you’re probably going to learn a whole lot more than you wanted to know, because I’m not only going to give you a recipe, I’m going to give you a quick culinary lesson based on my research.

In a large mixing bowl, add 200 grams (1 1/2 C) of Bread Flour and 140 grams (1 Cup) of All-Purpose Flour.

Measuring flour is one of the single most important things a baker can do.  Flour, unlike say, sugar, is compact-able.  It settles over time. A standard cup of flour can contain between 125 and 175 grams of flour, depending on how that flour is measured, how long it has been settling, what kind of flour, etc.  If at all possible, you should measure flour by weight, not by volume. That way, you are certain to get reliable results because you’ll know you’re using the same amount of flour every time.  Assuming you can’t spend the $25 necessary to purchase what should be one of the most essential items in your kitchen, I have included volume measurements.  If you must use the volume measurement, use the scoop and sweep method.  Take the measuring cup and scoop the necessary flour out of the bag or container.  Then use the back of a butter knife to sweep the excess flour off so you get an exact measurement.  DO NOT sift the flour before you do this.  DO NOT pour the flour into the measuring cup.

Likewise, the different types of flours are important.  Bread flour is made from "hard" wheat, and contains higher amounts of protein, which are responsible for the creation of gluten…the substance that will make your cookies chewy.  Make sure that you use the correct proportion of bread flour to all-purpose flour listed above.

Add to the flour 1 teaspoon of salt, 1 teaspoon of baking powder, and 1/2 a teaspoon of baking soda.

In this recipe, I call for both baking powder and baking soda.  Here’s why.  Both baking powder and baking soda are chemicals which create gas that blows "bubbles" in your baked good, but they work in different ways.  Baking soda (Calcium Carbonate) is a leavening agent that works when it is combined with an acid. That’s why, if you put baking soda and vinegar together, you get a geyser.  Baking powder is a dried and powdered leavener which contains baking soda AND an acid (usually tartaric acid, or cream of tartar) which reacts twice:  once when it gets wet, and again when it gets above a certain temperature.  The classic Toll House recipe calls for only baking soda, but this is, in my estimation, a bit of a mistake, because there is very little acid in standard chocolate chip cookies.  Additional, you generally only need 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda to raise 1 cup of flour.  So, the traditional 1 t. of Baking Soda is actually overkill, and can result in the bubbles in the dough getting so big that they can pop, and the cookie can go flat.  By combining the both soda and powder, you get built-in cookie insurance.  And since Baking powder is only 1/4 as strong as Baking Soda (i.e., it takes 1 teaspoon to raise 1 Cup of flour), you’re actually decreasing the amount of leavening.

Additionally, it’s extremely important that your baking powder and baking soda be fresh.  If you’ve had it for more than six months, throw it out and get new stuff.  It does go bad, and stops working.

Using a whisk, combine all the dry ingredients together thoroughly.  You don’t want there to be pockets of baking soda or salt in your dough later on.  You could also sift them together, but that’s overkill, and I hate trying to clean sieves or sifters. Set the dry ingredients aside.

Then, in another bowl, place 1 stick of room-temperature butter and 1/2 cup of regular, non-flavored Crisco.  Add 1 Cup of Dark Brown Sugar, and 1/2 a Cup of White Sugar.  Beat this mixture for at LEAST two-three minutes, until the mixture is fluffy and much lighter in color. 

This step is, aside from measuring the flour, the single most important step you can take to ensure your cookies raise correctly.  When you cream fats and sugars together, you are essentially using the crystaline structure of the sugar to punch tiny air holes into the structures of the fat.  These holes are the basis for the bubbles that your leavening is going to blow up for you later.  The chemical leaveners don’t have the strength to raise a dense cookie dough without starter bubbles, and it’s the job of creaming the butter and the sugar together to create those starter bubbles.  Don’t skimp out on this step!  Also, you may notice that I’ve added much more brown sugar than white sugar.  This is on purpose.  Using the dark brown sugar makes for a much more complex, caramel, molasses notes in the cookie than white sugar, which pretty much just adds sweetness.

Once your mixture is thoroughly creamed, add two eggs and two teaspoons of Vanilla Extract.  Use the GOOD stuff, none of this artificial Vanilla flavoring.  REAL Vanilla Extract.  Mix until well combined.  Once you add the eggs and vanilla, you can’t add any more air bubbles to the fat, so if you skimped out on the last step, you have now passed the point of no return.

Slowly incorporate the flour mixture into the wet ingredients, until they are thoroughly combined.  Mixing the flour with the wet ingredients will create gluten in the dough.  Unlike in cake making, however, you don’t need to worry about overbeating this dough.  We aren’t looking for tender cookies, we’re looking for chewy cookies…especially right around the edges.  The dough should be fairly stiff.  Add 1/2 a bag of good quality chocolate chips (I prefer Milk Chocolate myself, but semi-sweet can be good too).  Mix the chocolate chips into the dough by hand until they are evenly distributed.

Refrigerate your dough.  It is imperative that you refrigerate your dough for at LEAST 30 minutes.  I would recommend letting it sit for 24-36 hours if you can help it.  Letting the dough sit has three purposes.  First, it lets the flour molecules hydrate and soak up any excess moisture from the fat, the eggs, and the vanilla. Secondly, it lets the fat firm up again, which will keep it from melting too quickly in the oven, and thus prevents over-spreading.  And finally, letting the dough rest for longer periods of time helps some really complex and delicious flavors develop in the dough.  You get even more caramel undertones, more depth in the flavor profile of the final cookie.  Just make sure its covered tightly to prevent fridge funk from seeping into the dough.

When you’re ready to bake your cookies, preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Don’t trust that the thermostat on your oven will be accurate.  They rarely are.  Do yourself a huge favor and spend four dollars to invest in a cheap over thermometer.  That way you’ll always be sure your oven is always at the right temperature.  Also, I would suggest that you let your oven preheat for at least 30 minutes. I realized that, in the age of energy conservation, that’s a politically incorrect thing to say, but it’s important.  Ovens, especially electric ovens, cycle on and off so they’re always coasting over and under the temperature in a sine wave type of pattern.  You can minimize that by allowing the metal inside the oven to heat up to the oven temperature.  This will help to keep the temperature far more stable as you open the door to insert trays of cookies.

How you dish the cookies is also important.  I would suggest using a #24 ice cream disher (or scoop, depending on what you want to call it) to dish up your cookies.  This way, the cookies will be the same size and will get done at the same time.  Quantity control.  For cookie sheets, I would recommend using a standard aluminum half-sheet pan.  You can find these at any restaurant supply store for $4-5 dollars.  Avoid using non-stick pans, and really avoid using dark non-stick pans.  On top of your cookie sheet you should use either parchment paper, which you can find in the same aisle as your aluminum foil or plastic wrap, or even better, a silicone baking mat like a Sil-Pat.  These things are marvelous.  Cookies will not stick to them, nor will the bottoms burn before the top is done.   Best of all, they wipe clean with a wet paper towel, and the baking sheet never needs to be washed.

I usually dish about 9 cookies per tray and bake only one tray at a time.  Make sure that if you’re doing several trays, you let your trays cool down between batches.  Don’t put the cookie dough on a hot cookie sheet.  It will cause the fat to melt too quickly, and the cookie could come out too thin.

Bake the cookie for 9-11 minutes.  If I keep my oven at exactly 375, use the aluminum half-sheet pan with a silicone baking mat, I usually pull my cookies out right at 10 minutes, or will let them bake for another 30 seconds or so.

When the cookies first come out of the oven, they will seem a little soft and a little underdone.  They will also seem a little too puffy. This is okay.   Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for at least 10 minutes.  As the cookies cool, the remaining heat in the pan will finish up the cookies, the fat will solidify and the cookies will get that nice chewy consistency.  And the air in the bubbles inside the cookie dough will cool and contract, causing the cookie to deflate slightly.

Then eat to your heart’s content.  Anything this good can’t be bad for you. :)

Here’s the recipe again in standard format:

 

Matt’s Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 Stick of Unsalted Butter at room temperature
1/2 C. Unflavored Shortening
1 C. Brown Sugar
1/2 C. White Sugar
2 teaspoons of Pure Vanilla Extract
2 Large Eggs
200 Grams (1 1/2 C.) Bread Flour
140 Grams (1 C.) All-Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 Bag of High-Quality Chocolate Chips

1. Whisk Flours, Baking Soda, Baking Powder, and Salt together in a mixing bowl.  Set aside

2. Using a stand mixer or hand mixer, cream butter, shortening, and sugars together for several minutes until light and fluffy.

3. Add eggs and vanilla to the butter/sugar mixture and beat to combine

4. Slowly incorporate the flour mixture into the wet ingredients with your mixer until the dough is formed.

5.  Stir chocolate chips into the dough by hand

6. Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes, but preferably 24-36 hours.

7. Preheat oven to 375 for at least 30 minutes before baking the first batch of cookies

8. Dish dough onto a room temperature aluminum baking tray lined with a silicone baking mat using a #24 ice cream disher

9. Bake cookies for 9-11 minutes.  Let cool for 10 minutes on the tray before removing.

Variations:  Try adding nuts if you like them.  A couple of large flakes of course ground sea salt give a fantastic contrast between the salty and the sweet.  Or, a dash of cayanne pepper might give a surprising little background note to your cookies.

 

When I get home after Christmas, I’ll create a .PDF with a printable 4X6 recipe card on it.

Enjoy this recipe.  I only ask that if you try these and love them, send me an email and let me know.  Or comment here.  And, if your ever pass the recipe along, please put my blog address (http://blog.mattarmstrongmusic.com) on the recipe card.

Lately, I’ve been feeling nostalgic for the food I grew up with.  When I moved away from home and to Provo, I was exposed to a whole variety of ethnic food that you can’t find in places like the small mid-western town I grew up in.  You got Big Boy, fast food, "Mexican," and "Chinese."  That was it.  Oh, and lots of little cafes and diners too. 

But Japanese, Indian, Italian, Ecuadorian, Afghani, Brazilian, Malaysian, Korean, Vietnamese, real Chinese, French, Thai, etc.  These were all kinds of food I’d never tried before I left Michigan.  So, for the last several years, I’ve been expanding my palette.  I’ll try most things at least once, though I may never try them again.

But here in Redmond, you can’t throw a rock without hitting either seven Starbucks or 9 restaurants serving foods of Asian origin (mostly Japanese and Thai).  And though I enjoy those cuisines, they wear a bit thin after a while.

My mom, who I love dearly, is a very good recipe cook.  She can make anything from a recipe.  But, by her own admission, she isn’t a kitchen improviser the way that I am.  I seem to have this innate understanding of how food works, and I just seem to be able to make it fit together.

But as I mentioned before, I’ve been craving some of the food I grew up with.  My mom used to make Lemon Chicken (which isn’t anything like the lemon chicken you get at a Chinese Restaurant).  I’ve been craving meatloaf (which is strange because I always hated my mom’s meatloaf).  But one of my favorite dishes that my mother made was Beef Tips over Buttered Egg Noodles.

If you’ve never had this dish, it probably sounds a little weird.  It’s stew-sized pieces of beef that are braised in a brown gravy, then poured liberally over egg noodles.  It’s really, really yummy.  And REALLY mid-western.  I called my mom to get the recipe, but she couldn’t find it.  So, I did a little tinkering, and came up with a pretty good recipe of my own.  Here goes.

 

2 Lbs of Stew Beef
1 1/2 C Water
1/2 C Flour
2 T Beef Bouillon Granules
1 t. Dried Parsley
1/2 t. Dried Thyme
1 T. Cornstarch
Salt and Pepper to Taste
Canola or Vegetable Oil

Preheat the oven to 275-300 degrees

Throw the beef and flour in a Ziploc bag and shake to coat the beef.  In a large, oven-proof vessel (I use an enameled cast iron pot, but anything that can be used both on the stove and in the oven will work), heat up the oil and brown the floured beef.  While the beef is browning, combine water, beef bouillon, parsley, and thyme in a separate pot and bring to a boil.  Combine the cornstarch and some water in a small container and shake to create a slurry (I use a tiny gladware container for this).  Pour the slurry into the boiling mixture a little at a time and let it come back up to a boil to thicken.  Once it’s the consistency of a very loose gravy (it’s going to cook a lot longer, so don’t over-thicken) pour the gravy into the skillet.  Cover tightly and place in the oven for 2-3 hours or until fork tender. 

Serve over buttered egg noodles.  Makes enough for four people if you’re having other dishes or two if you’re not.  (Living alone, I rarely go to the effort of making a full, balanced meal when I cook.  I usually make just one dish and eat enough of it to make me sick.)

The processed ingredients, the dried herbs–they’re so indicative of the mid-western housewife cooking style from mid-20th century.  Normally, I wouldn’t be caught dead using ingredients like that in my cooking.  But sometimes, you just want to go back home. 

For me, this recipe reminds me of sitting at the big dining room table in our old Michigan home that had been built in 1914.  It was probably late fall or winter.  Maybe the Christmas decorations were out (Christmas was huge at our house.)  There was certainly snow on the ground.  Maybe I had just gotten back from Swim Practice or would be rushing out to play practice.  Jake or Megan and I would argue over who got to sit in the "one place"–the side of the table where there was only one chair instead of two.  Dad would fake us out by pretending to throw the loaf of bread while still holding on to the end of the bag.  Mom would make fruit salad out of canned mixed fruit, mandarin oranges, and sliced bananas.  Megan would belch loudly enough to peel the wallpaper.

Good times.