Best Ever Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Last year I worked at a bakery in California. While I was there I baked a LOT of chocolate chip cookies. The recipe was so good I took it with me to adapt for home use. It's still in grams, which is tricky if you don't have a scale, but I think it's faster to bake with a scale than with cups and spoons so I keep forgetting to convert it. Maybe someday. 

The recipe is pretty standard, with nearly equal parts brown sugar, white sugar, and butter and the usual eggs, flour, leavening, vanilla and chocolate. The most different thing about this recipe is the method. This is a recipe best suited for a stand mixer, and fits easily in a 5 quart mixer bowl (rather than the 60 quart bowl the original recipe requires!)

The method makes a cookie that's crisp on the edge, soft and chewy in the middle, with gooey chocolate chunks in every bite. The chocolate really makes the cookie, so use the nicest you have. My favorites are the dark bar from Trader Joe's or Guittard buttons, either the Lever du Soleil 61% or the French Vanilla. 

 This recipe works best when it's followed exactly. I often just kind of throw things together, but not these. They're the best chocolate chip cookies you'll ever make.

RECIPE

Makes 5 dozen 3 inch cookies

284 g butter, softened but not melty

284 g brown sugar

228 g sugar

6 g baking soda

6 g baking powder

9 g salt

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

500 g chopped chocolate

480 g all-purpose flour

Combine butter and sugar. Beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape the bowl and beat another minute. 

Add baking soda, baking powder, salt, and vanilla.  Beat until combined. 

Add eggs, mix until combined. 

Scrape and beat for 10 minutes. Yep, 10 minutes at a medium speed. 

Add chocolate and mix until equally distributed. 

Add half the flour, mix until just combined. Stop and scrape down the bowl. Repeat with the other half of the flour. 

Scoop onto a cookie sheet with a #40 scoop, or form balls of dough about 1 1/4" in diameter. I scoop all the cookies at once since they bake best cold. I then throw the cookies in the freezer for about 15 minutes while the oven preheats. 

[At this point you can freeze some of the dough solid to bake later, since 5 dozen is a lot of cookies. When you want to bake them, let the cookies sit overnight in the fridge and continue as below.]

Arrange cookies on a lightly greased cookie sheet, 12 to a half-sheet pan or 8 to a jelly-roll size pan. Bake 8-11 minutes, or until the edges just start to turn golden. 

Let cool for a few minutes on the pan, then remove to a rack to cool. 

Store in an airtight container for... I'm not sure how long they should last, they've never lasted more than 3 days in my house. 

Decorated Sugar Cookies

This is a really long post, but here's a round-up of the cookies I've done this summer:

I've started a tradition of making cookies for my niece's birthday. Last year she wasn't old enough to have real specific interests, so she got generic tropical cookies for her first birthday in Hawaii. Since then, she has become very attached to her penguin, Beepoo. Beepoo is a fuzzy chinstrap penguin toy that looks kind of like this:

Turns out it was easier to do the eyes first, opposite of what I expected.

Not all of the cookies got sprinkles. The first cookie of any design (much like the first pancake) is often an experiment, or a test of icing consistency and the design, which doesn't always look like I planned. Beepoo looked cute, so I added sprinkles to the others once I was sure I had the design down.

He was surprisingly easy to make in cookie form. I thought he looked especially cute with his crystal sugar "fur"! The cutter for the penguin cookie was a beehive, which I have never used as intended, but is great for other cookies! To go with I made a few jungle animal cookies because she seems to really like animals, from the chickens outside to chatting with Grandma's "doggy" on skype. 

Since her new brother was due just after her birthday I included some baby cookies for Mom and Dad.

The onesie cutter I have is HUGE, so I used a tombstone cutter and trimmed to make a reasonably sized onesie. 

Next year I'll have TWO sets of birthday cookies to send!

Lawnmower cookies. Those aren't words that are seen together often. In fact, when I was looking online for ideas I found exactly TWO pictures of lawnmower cookies, and neither was really what I was looking for. So I went looking for coloring pages. Yep. If you ever need a line drawing of anything, search for coloring pages.  

These cookies were done with 15 second icing (for an explanation, look here) apart from the black. After finishing the base of the cookie, I wish I would have done a pipe and flood with wet-on-wet grass for a smoother look, but these were better that I was expecting. They were a thank-you for someone who helped Katie and I move in June.

For a treat at a family reunion I made mustache cookies on a stick. I thought they would be fun for kids and adults, and they were! I iced the base with 15 second icing and used slightly thicker icing to add the texture on top in layers.  I don't own any mustache cutters so I had to get creative. Do you recognize any of the shapes?

They are, clockwise from the top right: butterfly, letter Y, a hand cut mustache (too much work, so I only did one!) a small scallop shell, Tinkerbell wings, and a trimmed moon

These are some of the cutters I used for mustaches. You don't need a specific cutter 

for everything, make your cutters do double (or triple!) duty

The cookies were a hit, and I would definitely do them again!

I made cookies for Katie to take to California. Some were Alice in Wonderland themed for her to take to Girl's Camp. 

I also sent cookies for Jonathan's birthday, even though they were a few weeks late. 

I went to a church pool party last month and decided to bring cookies! (cookies are appropriate for any occasion, right?) I was inspired by these towels from Crate & Barrel  (I got them last year, before everything I saw was mentally cookie-fied)

Cookie inspiration can come from anywhere!

Since 4th of July had come and gone I decided to go with bright tropical colors, but kept the ombre from the tea towel. I'd recently been working on a quilt with shades of these colors (including the aqua dot in the background, so cute!)

The twin pop idea came from Sweet Sugar Belle, and was cut from a cowboy hat cutter. The single pop was a fire hydrant and the tri-color pops were cut with a mega-phone cutter. I bought mini popsicle sticks to put in them at the craft store. Next time I'll soak the sticks so they burn less (oops!)

They're not perfect, but I'm still learning (a lot!) as I go. I'm also building back the strength in my right hand, which was severely injured a few years ago. I still have problems with my handwriting if I pipe for too long, but it's getting better.

I've been loving pink and coral lipsticks this summer, and these look like great colors for makeup

These aren't my favorite colors, but they're sure fun for a summer platter

This is what happens when your piping tip isn't completely dry.

Learn something new every day!

Last month was my mom's birthday. Even though she lives far away (all the way in California!) I made her birthday cookies. When I think of my mom I think of flowers, so I made pink and purple flowers. I don't have very many flower shaped cutters, so I made butterflies to match.

Since I'd just sent vanilla-almond cookies for Jonathan's birthday I decided to change things up and send lemon-poppyseed sugar cookies with lemon flavored icing for Mom. The cookies have lemon oil, lemon zest, and poppy seeds in the dough. I added strained lemon juice and extract to the icing.

Dear Mother, all flowers remind me of you

The cookies bake up just as sturdy, soft, and delicious as the vanilla-almond cookies. I'm excited to try different flavor combinations for different occasions!

Buzz Lightyear Cookies

Katie went to Girl's Camp this week as a counselor. Her group name is Buzz Lightyear; all the groups have light-themed names. I made cookies to send up mid-week as a surprise. I hope the girls like them!

Add caption

Happy Birthday Evelyn!

Today is my nieces birthday. Since I couldn't be there to bake her a cake I sent decorated sugar cookies instead!

She lives in Hawaii and loves the beach, so I went with tropical colors and shapes. I tried to pick shapes that would break less (I hope!) 

YAY! for Soufflee Cookies!!!

This might be my new favorite cookie recipe! They're so easy and delicious. I had extra swiss meringue from another dessert project and wasn't sure what to do with it, and then I remember this post at :pastrystudio. I estimated that I had about 4 egg whites of meringue left so I doubled it (she doesn't recommend it, but I was baking two sheets in each of two ovens, so the batter didn't sit and wait). I cooked the top oven batch perfectly, but forgot that the lower oven is about 25 degrees cooler than the top and underbaked some, which were still tasty, just less pretty and puffy.

I definitely recommend trying this recipe, but be sure to have plenty of milk on hand when you do. :)

YAY! for Tarts!!

The 2010 November Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Simona of briciole. She chose to challenge Daring Bakers’ to make pasta frolla for a crostata. She used her own experience as a source, as well as information from Pellegrino Artusi’s Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well.

I added orange zest to my crust and made a cranberry jam. I cut out circles of dough, piped jam on top, and pinched corners to make tiny tartlets. Everyone loved them.

YAY! for cookies!!!

The September 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Mandy of “What the Fruitcake?!” Mandy challenged everyone to make Decorated Sugar Cookies based on recipes from Peggy Porschen and The Joy of Baking.

This month we did sugar cookies, which I've done before. I'll stick with my own recipe for the cookies in the future as they are nice and soft.
The rounds are going to my brother in Singapore and the leaves are going camping with my sister.

DB October 09- Parisian Macarons

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe. Unfortunately, it seems nearly everyone found this recipe to be quite problematic, and as a result the recipe I'll be posting will not be the challenge recipe.
I didn't really succeed the way I would have liked to, but at least a few came out looking kinda okay. They're pretty flat, but they have feet, not tutus, and are mostly round. My batter ended up runnier than I had thought and the first tray ran all together to make one big blob (still with feet, YAY! feet!!). The second tray had far fewer macarons piped onto it, but due to uneven heat in the oven (and despite a stack of half-sheet-pans) they rose a bit unevenly and some are much taller on one side than the other.
The recipe I used comes from Helen of Tartelette ( http://www.mytartelette.com )

Basic French Meringue Macarons
100g weighed egg whites- I used the whites in a carton from Trader Joe's- room temperature
2 tsp of powdered egg whites- I used Wilton Meringue Powder
50 g sugar
200 g powdered sugar
110 g Almond meal- this also came from Trader Joe's and wasn't blanched, but I like the speckle-y look
Paste food color- I used orange gel color by Wilton

1. In a clean bowl with clean beaters whip the egg whites and meringue powder to a foam, then gradually add the sugar. Whip until stiff peaks form
2. In a food processor, grind together the almond meal and paste color. I added the powdered sugar after the color and almond meal were evenly combined to aerate and eliminate lumps.
3. Pour the almond meal and sugar onto the meringue and quickly mix, using as few strokes as needed. It should look glossy and be pipeable.
4. Fill a pastry bag or zipper bag fitted with a half inch round tip with the batter and pipe small rounds onto parchment paper on upside-down baking sheets. Bang the pan of shells down onto the countertop to release bubbles.
5. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F (150C). Let the macarons sit out for an hour and bake for 10-12 minutes. Let them cool before removing from the parchment. Let cool completely before filling.
6. Pipe filling onto half the shells and top with remaining shells.

July DB

The July Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Nicole at Sweet Tooth. She chose Chocolate Covered Marshmallow Cookies and Milan Cookies from pastry chef Gale Gand of the Food Network.

This month's challenge was great. The cookies turned out beautiful, unfortunately my camera hasn't been working. I needed cookies for a church event, so I made the Milans. They were really easy and I will definitely make them again. I made mine round, as it was easier to make them all the same.