Recipe #9: Quintessential Chocolate Chip Cookies

Intro

My brother challenged me to bake my way through the New York Times Top 11 Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes, mostly so maybe I would send him some to “taste-test.”

And why not?

I printed all the recipes, scanned the ingredients and spent about $60 on the stuff I did not have, like cake flour and coconut sugar - not including the cookie scoop that I have always wanted and finally bought. I did not buy any super special ingredients. No chocolate feves, no Maldon salt.

The Recipe

You know you are deep into the last few recipes with generic titles like “Quintessential” - and next up is “Perfect” - all the good names are taken. My first read of the recipe elicited a mumbled “Not sure what is so quintessential about this” and that thought was supported through to the end product.

A few things to note - this recipe calls for weighing ingredients, although there are measurements in parentheses, which is what I used here (I generally do not measure cookie ingredients by weight, and many recipes do not even use weights). I used bittersweet chocolate, the old reliable Kroger Simple Truth 70% chocolate chunks. While I am a fan of higher cacao percentages, there is not enough sugar in the dough to balance it.

Dough flavor was fine. I used a 1 TBS scoop, so cookies were on the small side and I did not get 4 dozen. I baked them right away and did not refrigerate.

This is an unremarkable recipe. My team of tasters felt the same way, with “hey it’s a cookie” shrugs. I mean, it’s good, but it’s not going to knock any of the front-runners out of the top 5. Notably, this cookie does not age well - tasty out of the oven (and they look great), but starting to dry out by the next day even in a covered container.

Universal review: meh.