I’m embarassed to admit I had the ultimate fail yesterday with my chocolate chip cookies. I think it was the butter. It was too soft. Plus, I apparently can’t divide by two correctly, so I tried to cream WAY too much sugar with my butter (despite my gut feeling that it was too much) and then added more butter later. I think that messed it up too.

So, because of that, I decided to post on here what I don’t normally post, and that is a chocolate chip cookie recipe. Kind of. I researched ways on how to make the perfect chocolate chip cookies. This isn’t exactly a measure-and-mix recipe just because “perfect” means so many different things to different people. Instead, I’ll let you know what combination you’ll need to have to obtain the cookie you want. (Hopefully.)

1. The most loved chocolate chip cookie is the chewy type (thick and full of moisture).

• One of your goals is to bake the cookie before it has a chance to flatten out; you can achieve this partly by refrigerating the dough and placing it on a cold cookie sheet (NEVER bake cookies on a hot cookie sheet. Put the cookie sheet in the refrigerator between batches.)
• Turn the oven up and bake the cookies for a shorter period of time.
• Use a higher proportion of brown sugar (which contains molasses) to white sugar.
• My favorite Food Network chef, Alton Brown, suggests replacing one of the eggs with just egg yolk + 1 oz of milk since egg whites tend to dry out cookies.
• Most importantly, don’t overcook the cookies. Take them out when they seem a little less than done.

2. Crisp and crunchy cookies have their place in the world too.

• Allow the cookies to spread out and then bake; smaller rounds of dough as well as a lower temperature / longer baking time will make this happen.
• A higher ratio of white to brown sugar will make the cookies crispy.
• Alton Brown suggests increasing the amount of baking soda, which will reduce the acidity of the dough and raise the temperature at which it sets, allowing the cookie dough to spread farther before the cookies cook.

Some important things to note are that you can’t exactly replace butter and margarine as a 1:1 ratio. Margarine has more water, and thus will give you more moisture in your cookies. You can use margarine; just correct the other ingredients accordingly. Place the freshly baked cookies on a cooling rack so that your cookies don’t get soggy on the bottom. Brown sugar needs to be packed while measuring; white sugar doesn’t pack, so you can skip this step with white sugar. It’s not a good idea to pack flour, but rather one should spoon the flour into the dry-goods measuring cup and then leveled out with the back of a knife for an accurate amount.

Of course, you’ll have to do a few batches for trial and error to get your own unique recipe. Use the Nestle Tollhouse recipe (on the back of chocolate chip cookies; also found here) for a standard, really good cookie recipe to start with, then add in your own variations. You won’t even need a cookie jar — just cooling racks!

Sources: Experience, http://www.sunset.com/food-wine/techniques/perfect-chocolate-chip-cookie-00400000012170/ , http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/7/18/755008/-Whats-for-Dinner:-Controlling-Your-Cookies

I came across this old article, but people are talking about it again so why don’t I hop on the bandwagon

Let’s say you have a niiiiice batch of chocolate chip cookie dough waiting to turn into warm and chewy chocolate chip cookies. It’s HOT outside, and turning on the oven would make everything worse. Well, why not use the hot summer sun as your source of heat and… say… your car as the oven? It’s been done!!

Don’t tell me that you’ve never had the slightest urge to cook or bake something outside when it’s 100* out. After all isn’t there a saying that says that it’s so hot you can cook an egg on the sidewalk? I think we should change it to it’s so hot you can bake cookies (chocolate chip cookies please!) in your car!

Nicole over at Baking Bites decided to take that to heart and bake them in her car. In short, you need parchment paper, a cookie sheet (see? just like baking regular cookies in a regular oven!) and potholders to make sure the hot pan doesn’t ruin your dash. It took about 2.5 hours in 100* weather outside (180* inside the car in direct sunlight over a short period of time) for the cookies to be done; there is no “golden brown and delicious” visual aspect to these sun-baked cookies due to the lack of caramelization of the sugars; and most importantly, they smelled and tasted deeelicious!!

Let me know if you try this. It doesn’t look like I’ll be able to do this in the next 10 days as predicted by weather.com if I want to follow Nicole’s 100* outside guideline:

			High / Low (°F)	Precip. %
Tonight Jul 21		Mostly Clear	67°	0 %
Wed Jul 22		Partly Cloudy	84°/67°	0 %
Thu Jul 23		Partly Cloudy	85°/68°	0 %
Fri Jul 24		Partly Cloudy	83°/67°	0 %
Sat Jul 25		Mostly Sunny	82°/68°	0 %
Sun Jul 26		Sunny	82°/67°	0 %
Mon Jul 27		Sunny	81°/66°	0 %
Tue Jul 28		Sunny	79°/65°	0 %
Wed Jul 29		Sunny	79°/65°	0 %
Thu Jul 30		Sunny	78°/64°	0 %
Last Updated Jul 21 08:15 p.m. PT

But August is rolling in VERY quickly and I *may* have a chance then. How do you think brownies will cook in this manner..? an entire CAKE?!