Re: Best chocolate chip cookies?
If you're not opposed to making your own cookies, you like them soft, and you have a little extra time on your hands, give this a shot next time you're in the mood to bake. I've had people offer to pay me to make these so they could give them in gift baskets and there's really no big secret to it other than extra time and some OCD tendencies...
1. Follow the Tollhouse recipe on the bag of chocolate chips, but use the 'chunks' instead of the chips, and then add another half bag of regular chips. (it's easier to just double the recipe and use two bags of chunks and one bag of chips, but that also makes about 80 big cookies - you may not want that many)
2. For each batch of cookies you're making, add about 3/4 of a cub of oatmeal (raw oats, not the sloppy cooked stuff). If you don't mind the texture of oatmeal in your cookies, you're good to go. But if you don't want to know that there's oatmeal in the cookies, put the oats in a coffee grinder or food processor first so it's more like the consistency of flour. I'll explain in a minute.
3. Add a little extra brown sugar. If you were measuring out 3/4 cup of brown sugar, don't make it exact. Pack a little more in there.
4. You can't just 'drop' cookies onto a cookie sheet with a spoon. They come out retarded and nasty. You have to roll each cookie into a ball by hand (keep your hands wet so it doesn't stick). You want the dough ball to be just a bit bigger than a golf ball, and you don't want to do much more than 8 to a sheet because they'll spread.
5. With the dough balls on the cookie sheet, you're not done. Now you need to flatten the balls out a little bit with the back of a spoon. Because the cookies spread as they cook (butter and sugar do that), you want the center of the cookie to be slightly lower than the outer edge of the cookie. It's actually easier to do this with a clean, wet golf ball but if someone walked in on you, they'd think you were nuts. This will get you a consistent thickness to the cookie. The edges won't be more done than the center.
6. You have to adjust the temperature and cooking time. I think the Tollhouse recipe says 375 for 15 minutes or so. Start out at 400 for 11-12 minutes, take the cookie out and let it cool on the sheet for ten minutes before trying to move it. The cookie is actually still cooking once it's out of the oven and that little bit of oatmeal will help firm up the undercooked cookie. That's why they'll stay soft. If the cookie holds up after you've let it sit for a while, you're good to go. If not, try another cookie for an additional minute and so on until you've got something that works for you.
I'm not suggesting I'm some master cookie maker, and there's really no big secret to reveal here. Its the simple Tollhouse recipe with extra chocolate chips, a little extra brown sugar, and some oatmeal. The key to this is shaping the cookies before they cook and playing with the temperature and cook time. The added oatmeal in the dough allows you to undercook the cookies a little without having them fall apart on you. The chocolate chunks make a big difference in the traditional cookie and I'd put these up against Mrs. Fields any day. They're almost as good, but you can make them whenever you want for next to nothing. It just takes a while...
