Sugar Savvy

There has been a lot of discussion online recently regarding what makes for a great chocolate chip cookie in the aftermath of the NY Times article: “Perfection? Hint: It’s Warm and Has a Secret.”  The article explores the secrets to making a great chocolate chip cookie with various bakers and includes a recipe adapted from Jacques Torres.

At the base, all chocolate chip cookies contain flour, sugar, eggs, vanilla, chocolate and leavening. It is the ratio of these ingredients and the technique that accounts for the wide variation of chocolate chip cookie recipes out there.

There are three basic types of chocolate chip cookies: thin and crispy, soft and chewy, and puffy and cakey. Most people have a favorite and remain fiercely loyal to that type. My preference happens to be for a soft and chewy cookie, the kind that is almost gooey in the center and a bit more set around the edges. It has to be slightly under-baked and loaded with chocolate chunks.

So how do we recognize a thin and crispy cookie recipe from a soft and chewy or a puffy and cakey one?

In general, thin and crispy cookie recipes contain a high ratio of butter, more white sugar than brown sugar and use baking soda. The high butter content and baking soda allows for spreading, and the white sugar contains less moisture than brown sugar, making the cookie crispy. Thin and crispy cookies also bake for longer at low temperatures in order to encourage maximum spreading.  A good example of a thin and crispy cookie recipe is Dorie Greenspan’s “My Best Chocolate Chip Cookies” from “BAKING: From My Home to Yours” (you can see a picture of these cookies on Dorie’s website).

In contrast, soft and chewy cookie recipes have more flour, might have you melt the butter, add an extra egg yolk and use more brown sugar than white sugar in order to increase moisture and make a stiffer dough, thereby resulting in a thicker, softer cookie. Chilling the dough before baking and forming large round mounds of cookie dough can also help to prevent too much spreading and create a chewier cookie. Here is a good example of a soft and chewy cookie recipe from allrecipes.com.

For a cakey cookie, you will often find recipes using cake flour, shortening, baking powder and milk. The cake flour makes the cookies light and tender, the milk adds steam during the cooking process, which allows the cookies to puff, and the use of shortening and baking powder prevents the cookie from spreading.

So now you know … get out there and bake your favorite!