Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever
This weekend I made the best cookies I’ve ever made in my life. For someone who made cookies to sell in a restaurant for years that’s a pretty big statement.
For years my “go to” chocolate chip cookie has been Kim Boyce‘s Chocolate Chip Cookies from her book Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours. Published in 2010 she was one of the first noted pastry chefs with a restaurant background to seriously experiment with whole grain baking. The book ended up winning a James Beard award and for many of us was our first template to baking with whole grains. The first recipe I tried in the book was for Chocolate Chip Cookies. Strangely enough, I was never a fan of chocolate chip cookies, even as a kid. They were always too sweet for me so I thought maybe the whole wheat would temper the sweetness. Not that I really needed a way to make another food delicious for my palate but, well, you know.
The first time I made them I think I ate about ten in the first twenty-four hours after they came out of the oven. They were perfect. Not hippie-esque in any way which, of course, was my fear. They were exactly the right sweetness level, but the satisfaction was like they were food, not dessert. Everyone who ate them thought I was a genius. (Thank you Kim!) Besides sweetness the texture of her cookies was wonderful. The type you can make chewy or crisp by just changing the cooking time.
So last weekend after a long yard sale day I thought I’d make my crew a treat. I rummaged through my pantry looking for the whole wheat flour and the only bag I could find was our local Pasadena mill Grist and Toll‘s Hard White Wheat Pastry Flour. I’d never made the cookies with either freshly milled flour, which can act differently in a recipe, or with the more finely milled pastry flour. I was a bit thrown off my game but I continued, thinking how bad can it be? Not bad at all. Sort of like crack as it turns out. As they were baking I poked a cookie. It was ethereally soft. When they came out of the oven they had that cracked sugar sheen on the top. My friend Lucy was the first to grab one. She looked like a four year old eating her first great cookie. I used farmers’ market eggs which were kind of huge so the dough was a bit wetter than usual. I had used all the flour so I added a little Daughter’s Granola. Not so much to make them granola cookies but just enough to soak up a little wetness. That’s why you see a few little beads of amaranth in the photo above. I also used my own brown sugar. Frustrated by how light dark brown sugar is lately, I started making my own by adding molasses to white cane sugar. It’s very moist.
Recipe adapted from Kim Boyce’s Chocolate Chip Cookies in Good to the Grain
Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
Course: Dessert, Snack, Tea Time
Cuisine: American
Servings: 25 cookies
Ingredients
Dry Mix:
3 cups Whole Wheat Pastry Flour (I used Hard White Wheat Pastry Flour)
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1.5 teaspoons kosher salt (I use Diamond Crystal)
Wet Mix:
8 oz cold unsalted butter cut into 1/2
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons real vanilla extract
8 oz bittersweet chocolate roughly chopped into 1/4
Instructions
Dry Mix:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silpat.
2. Pour the flour out of the bag or container into a bowl and whisk to fluff up a bit. Using the scoop and scrape method measure out the flour into another bowl. Add the remaining dry ingredients and use a hand whisk to mix. Set aside while you prepare the wet mix.
Wet Mix:
1. Put the butters and sugar into a bowl. Use the mixer’s paddle attachment. Mix on low speed just until the butter and sugars are blended about 2 minutes. Use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
2. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing until each is combined. Mix in the vanilla.
3. Add all the flour at once to the blended wet mix. Blend on low speed unless you want a flour mask. Mix just until flour barely combines. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl.
4. Add the chocolate all at once to the batter. Mix on low speed until the chocolate is evenly combined. Again scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl. If necessary use your hands to fully combine the ingredients.
5. Scoop out large walnut size pieces of dough and set them about 2″ apart on the lined baking sheets.
6. Bake for 16 to 20 minutes rotating the sheets halfway through. The cookies will be brown if you use whole wheat flour or deep golden if you use white whole wheat pastry flour. Pull the parchment or silpat off the sheets and onto the cooler counter with the cookies still on them.
7. The cookies are equally wonderful warm from the oven or completely cooled. I usually make a few right away then I take the rest of the batter and i make a 1-1/2″ diameter snake of dough on a 12″ sheet of plastic wrap. I tightly wrap up the batter and refrigerate or freeze it for use another day. The roll of dough doesn’t have to be perfect. Then I just cut the roll into 3/4″ to 1″ pieces and bake them. No need to push the pieces flat.