Clifton's Cooking Blog: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Tender chewy chocolate chip cookies sprinkled with kosher salt to awaken the taste the taste-buds and heighten the chocolate experience. Add a new dimension to chocolate chip cookies by lightly sprinkling the cookies with kosher or course ground sea salt.

Ingredients

8 oz. (2 sticks) butter softened to room temperature 65° to 75°

2 ½ oz. (3/8 cup) Granulated sugar

7 ½ oz. (1 1/8 cup) dark brown sugar

2 large eggs room temperature

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons kosher salt (if table salt only use 1 teaspoon)*

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

10 oz. (about 2 ¼ cups) all purpose flour

8 oz. semi-sweet chocolate either rough chop from bars or chocolate chips.

Bake 350° 14 minutes

Mixing Instructions

Cream the butter at medium speed. This is all about adding air to the butter which will make a lighter cookie, not a dense hard cookie. I use a counter top mixer with a whisking beater for all of the mixing except the mixing in of the dry ingredients. After the butter is well creamed, about 2 minutes add the granulated sugar, continue to mix at medium speed for about another 1 minute. Add the brown sugar and mix for another 1 ½ minutes. Add the eggs one at a time thoroughly incorporating each before adding the next scrape the sides and the beater and mix well between and after each egg.

Add vanilla and mix, remove the whisking beater and scrape the sides and the beater. Up until this point there was no concern about over mixing. Our mixing up until now has been about two things first to add the non-listed ingredient, air, and to allow the sugars to absorb the moisture from the butter, eggs, and the vanilla. We do not want to over mix once we add the four, otherwise the flour will start to create gluten chains, not good.

Change the beater, place the bowl beater in the mixer, add the salt, baking powder, and the baking soda, mix for about 30-45 seconds. Scrape down the sides and the beater add about 1/3 of the flour mix on medium low for 15 to 30 seconds, stop and scrape the beater and the bowl, add another 1/3 of the flour, repeat the mixing scraping then add then balance of the flour and mix until the flour in incorporated. Scrape beater and the bowl checking to be sure there is no unmixed flour in the bowl. Add the chocolate chips or chunks and mix well by hand with a spatula or wooden spoon.

Now for the hardest part waiting, for really good cookies they need to rest at least four hours, one day would be better.

Heat the oven to 350°. The temperature of the dough will have huge affect on the cookie at this point. Cold dough (straight from the refrigerator) will make a thicker cookie and will require a little longer cooking time. Room temperature dough will flatten out, but could still be soft if it is not cooked to long. I prefer dough that is cool but not cold. I have not checked the temperature, but if I were to guess it is somewhere between 55° to 60°. I go more by feel when I am scooping the dough, than by temperature. If the dough is easy to scoop little or no resistance (peanut butter soft) it is to warm. If it is as hard as ice-cream it is to cold. We should be able to scoop the dough in one dragging motion with the scoop penetrating into the dough firmly, but getting full scoop. If all that you can do is just scrap the top of the dough and not scoop the dough it is still too cold, let the dough slowly start to soften, it may take an hour or two.