Chewy Wookies prefer Chewy Chippy Cookies
Continuing this concept of classics / reliable recipes from yesterday, can we talk for a moment about chocolate chip cookies?
It’s funny how the simplest things in life can be some of the hardest to make. Where cheesecake seems like an ordeal to make, it’s actually quite easy and forgiving. Keep your ratios balanced and you will always have an edible result. Even if the final product is cracked you can smother it in sauces and no one is the wiser. Cheesecake should be firm, creamy and maybe just slightly contested as to whether it should be tarter or sweeter but all in all I think cheesecake is pretty universal.
Chocolate Chip Cookies on the other hand…. Is there anything more classic and more debatable than the perfect chocolate chip cookie? I don’t think so. The only dessert that could maybe give chocolate chip cookies a run for their money is the debate over brownies but I’ll leave that to another post.
Should the cookies be soft and cakey, moist and chewy or firm and crisp? For the crips folks should they be thick and snappy or thin and crunchy? Nuts or no nuts? Chips or chunks? Milk Chocolate, Bittersweet or Semisweet? White Chocolate? Secret ingredients? I’d wager I could spend an entire year of blog posts on chocolate chip cookies and never repeat myself on a recipe. It’s a verifiable menagerie of personal taste and textural preferences for these babies.
Personally I’m not set firmly on a number of these preferences; it really can depend on my mood. I’m certainly in the moist and chewy camp for texture the majority of the time but my chocolate choice will vary by the hour. I do have to say I prefer chunks to chips but cost wise they aren’t always the most affordable option. Chips are usually easier to find and much cheaper to use than high quality, brick chocolate. Until I make it big with my own scifi cooking show I will have to succumb to the pinch of my wallet more often than not.
Man I’m boring today. I promise an entertaining story or something next time folks rather than a housewife-esque musing over ingredients. Unless of course you’re enjoying this sort of thing…let me know. I’m never sure who reads or why they do.
These are NOT the perfect, simple chocolate chip cookie. Texturally they are in the moist and chewy camp making them amazing of course but I couldn’t resist playing around with the recipe. If I’d had some nice chunk chocolate I would have tried to constrain myself but I didn’t. What I did have was a bag of Reese’s Peanut Butter Chips screaming out to me 
from my cabinet. If I didn’t bake them I was going to sit down with the whole bag and munch happily away while I finished the final remaining episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Did I mention I’ve marathoned the entire series now off of Netflix? I’ve moved on to DS9 now. Actually I should write something up about that experience — rewatching all of next Gen, in order, for the first time since it was on air and I was a child. Hmmmmm. What recipe goes with the sexy command of one Captain Jean-Luc Picard. **Brain begins to churn**
Meanwhile here are some Chocolate & Peanut Butter Chip Cookies modified from Dorie Greenspan’s “Best” Chocolate Chip Cookies. Dorie seems to fall in the same camp as I do with respect to using chunks but her recipe works either way. Ya know one of these days I should explain who this woman is to ya’ll since I frequently reference her work. Another post…another post. On to the cookies!
Dorie claims this recipe makes roughly 45 cookies…. I barely scraped out 26 – 2 Baker’s Dozen. Dunno how small her chocolate chip cookies are but I like mine to take up an entire open hand. I guess you could go smaller but…why?? Keep that in mind when you use this recipe for baking times. If you have smaller cookies they will bake up a bit faster than mine did so you’ll want to keep an eye on them.
Chocolate & Peanut Butter Chip Cookies
modified from Dorie Greenspan’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies in “Baking from my home to yours”
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 cup sugar
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- 2/3 cup packed light brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 10 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips
- 8 ounces peanut butter chips
- (my secret ingredient #2) Hey now I can’t share everything with you. I need to keep some mystery if nothing else to make sure my boyfriend(s) can’t replicate my presence in the kitchen. Anyway these will be good regardless of my stingy nature. I promise.
Getting Ready: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
Whisk together the flour, salt, cinnamon and baking soda.
Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with the paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed for about 1 minute, until smooth. Add the sugars and beat for another 2 minutes or so, until well-blended. Beat in the vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating for 1 minute after each egg goes inches Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the dry ingredients in 3 portions, mixing only until each addition is incorporated. On low speed, or by hand with a rubber spatula, mix in the chocolate and peanut butter chips
Spoon the dough by slightly rounded tablespoonfuls onto the baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between spoonfuls.
Bake the cookies- one sheet at a time and rotating the sheet at the midway point- for 14-15 minutes, or until they are brown at the edges and golden in the center; they may still be a little soft in the middle, and that’s just fine. Pull the sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to rest for 1 minute, then carefully, using a wide metal spatula, transfer them to racks to cool to room temperature.
Repeat with the remainder of the dough, cooling the baking sheets between batches.
