The Catch-All Cookie: the best homemade chocolate chip cookie recipe around

Recipe by Rachael Sheridan
Photos by Amy Sheridan

In my 33 years on this planet, I’ve learned one thing to be entirely true, learn how to bake one thing (just one thing!) well and you can make friends and find love. Truth.

Let me back up. I become mildly obsessed with certain things. There’s my love of pie, my slight obsession with Arborio Rice Pudding, a year long love affair with layered cakes, a flirtation with Beef Stew, and recently these chocolate chip cookies.

Now, everyone has an opinion about chocolate chip cookies. Some say chewy, some say crunchy. There’s the chocolate chunk camp and the mini chip camp. Nuts or no nuts. Oatmeal as an attempt at nutrition in said cookie? Some say yes. For me, my search for my perfect chocolate cookie had the following requirements: crispy and chewy, large-and-in-charge, the proper amount of chocolate goodness in every cookie (some cookies always get left out of chocolatey goodness), dark chocolate was a must, let it be a buttery deliciousness explosion and not flat as a pancake. I tried numerous recipes in the kitchen of Cube Cafe and our staff graciously taste tested numerous batches on my quest. But the real kicker was adding something I remembered reading in Suzanne Goin’s “Sunday Suppers at Lucques”. Her pastry chef makes a kabocha cake with brown butter which gives the cake a nutty buttery goodness. BAM! Browned butter it was. When someone as talented as Suzanne (I feel I can call her Suzanne, we live in the same city) says “this is good idea and you should try it”, you really should listen. Extra egg yolks and an ice cream scooper helped with height as well as a hot oven turned down right before cooking. I damn near quadrupled the vanilla extract, and as for proper chocolate distribution I use Vahrhona 72% chocolate feves, one pushed into the the center of the ice cream scoop and one placed on top before baking. Oh! and i almost forgot. Butter. Don’t you dare use margarine. Use butter. Good butter. The best butter you can find. I like Plugra (which you can find at Trader Joe’s) or any artisan butter.

Friends and co-workers tell me these are the best chocolate chip cookies they’ve ever had. Are they just being nice to me because they know about my obsession? Probably. But who cares, I’ll take it. Everyone gets excited about a warm cookie. And doing something nice like making the people in your life warm cookies is just a good way to spend the day. Give them a whirl, I hope you enjoy them. Make them for your crush, your friends, your coworkers, your landlord. Whoever could use some cookie love. I promise you’ll get it back in return.

What’s your perfect recipe? I’d love to hear about it.

Happy baking,

Rachael

You will need:
one 1 oz. ice cream scoop
parchment paper
cookies sheets
a stand mixer

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees.

Directions

1. Use the beater attachment on your Kitchen Aid mixer. Place half of the room temperature butter in the bowl of your mixer.
2. In a medium sized saucepan, over medium heat, brown the other half of the butter. The butter will begin to turn toasty brown and smell nutty. Keep an eye on it and keep stirring – you don’t want it to burn.
3. Once it browns, remove from the heat and pour it over the room temperature butter in the bowl of your mixer.
4. Let stand 5 minutes.
5. Begin to mix the two butters together on low. Be careful! You don’t want to get splashed with hot butter.
6. Add both sugars and the vanilla extract.
7. Beat well, scraping down the sides, for about 2 minutes.
8. Add the eggs and egg yolk and beat on medium for 3 minutes, scraping down the sides.
9. Add the salt, baking soda and half the four.
10. Mix well.
11. Add the other half of the flour and mix until all is combined.
12. At this point, lower your oven temperature to 350 degrees.
13. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper.
14. Using your ice cream scoop, scoop out a heaping amount of cookie dough and push one chocolate feve into the center, then drop onto cookie sheet.
15. Place another chocolate feve on top of the cookie.
16. Repeat this process, lining up your cookies about an inch apart from each other.

Bake for 8-12 minutes, checking at 8 minutes to see if they’re to your liking. I take them out when they’re brown on the outside and appear to be slightly raw on the inside. Repeat this process until you’re out of dough.

Let the cookies cool for 5 minutes on the tray and then remove to a cooling rack.

Rachael’s Tips:
*I use large sheet pans in the Cube Café kitchen, with home cookie pans you will get about 4 pans of cookies.
**This is a large batch, you can most certainly cut it in half, but I recommend freezing half of the cookie balls right on the sheet, remove when frozen and store in a freezer bag. That way you can cook a few off when you want to. No need to defrost.
***Valrhona also make a Gianduja feve which is hazelnut and chocolate (think nutella) I love these as well for a change of pace. Or try their white chocolate feve and add chopped nuts to the batter. How good would a peanut butter feve be? Let’s all write Valrhona about that.