So on Monday, due to vacation schedule logistics, we are having an office party trifecta: my boss' birthday, our admin Vonetta's birthday (or as I call her: our Trinidadian Radar O'Reilly -- sidenote: my youngest niece was born after M*A*S*H went off the air in 1983 --> there's an entire generation who would have NO IDEA what I'm talking about! although this satiric song warbled by the cast seems still appropriate 25 years later, now that we've been in Iraq and Afghanistan for...HOW long?!), and my coworker Dennis 20th anniversary with the company (yes, 20 -- my mind be boggling -- albeit we will technically be working for a different company soon).
Since the 2 birthday ladies are supposed to be "surprised" (after this many years, a party is not exactly a shocker, but still...tradition) only Dennis got to express a menu preference: chocolate chip cookies. This has motivated me to finally try the recipe for chewy (not crispy, oh no) chocolate chip cookies from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook. (They have a separate recipe for crispy cookies.)
Although they have many recipes on their website, none are exactly the same as the one from the book (which makes sense, or why else fork over moolah?) but this one comes somewhat close to the cookbook version: King Arthur's soft chocolate chip cookie recipe. Besides some minor differences in sugar types, the key change is that the web version omits the crucial step of refrigerating the dough overnight (although their blog did give me some interesting suggestions on freezing cookie dough).
Between the King Arthur's Bakers' Banter blog post and the July 2008 New York Times Dining article on their concurrent searches for THE ultimate chocolate chip cookie, I have been convinced of the superiority of refrigerating cookie dough prior to baking, the longer the better. (The New York Times article explains the food chemistry behind the various ingredients and techniques and has made me keen to track down some books on food science from the good old NYPL, in addition to the book I recently borrowed from my sweetie's mom, Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor.)
We'll see how this all turns out. (This may be old hat to experienced bakers, but it's an exotic new world to me.) In the meantime, cookies in progress....
The drippiest cookie dough I've ever seen, pre-fridge:
3 cups of semisweet chocolate chips -- you may notice slightly different colors since this recipe used A BAG AND A HALF of chips, (granted, it's supposed to make 4 dozen cookies, but still!) -- one bag of Hershey's, and half a bag of Guittard:
Really, it's more like a mountain of chips with some dough to hold them together:
To be continued...
Since the 2 birthday ladies are supposed to be "surprised" (after this many years, a party is not exactly a shocker, but still...tradition) only Dennis got to express a menu preference: chocolate chip cookies. This has motivated me to finally try the recipe for chewy (not crispy, oh no) chocolate chip cookies from the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking cookbook. (They have a separate recipe for crispy cookies.)
Although they have many recipes on their website, none are exactly the same as the one from the book (which makes sense, or why else fork over moolah?) but this one comes somewhat close to the cookbook version: King Arthur's soft chocolate chip cookie recipe. Besides some minor differences in sugar types, the key change is that the web version omits the crucial step of refrigerating the dough overnight (although their blog did give me some interesting suggestions on freezing cookie dough).
Between the King Arthur's Bakers' Banter blog post and the July 2008 New York Times Dining article on their concurrent searches for THE ultimate chocolate chip cookie, I have been convinced of the superiority of refrigerating cookie dough prior to baking, the longer the better. (The New York Times article explains the food chemistry behind the various ingredients and techniques and has made me keen to track down some books on food science from the good old NYPL, in addition to the book I recently borrowed from my sweetie's mom, Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor.)
We'll see how this all turns out. (This may be old hat to experienced bakers, but it's an exotic new world to me.) In the meantime, cookies in progress....
The drippiest cookie dough I've ever seen, pre-fridge:
3 cups of semisweet chocolate chips -- you may notice slightly different colors since this recipe used A BAG AND A HALF of chips, (granted, it's supposed to make 4 dozen cookies, but still!) -- one bag of Hershey's, and half a bag of Guittard:
Really, it's more like a mountain of chips with some dough to hold them together:
To be continued...
Refrigerating the dough is indeed a crucial step. This sounds stupid, but for years I was disappointed by home-baked chocolate chip cookies because they didn't have the same chewy texture as cookies made from store-bought dough. Then I tried a recipe that required refrigeration: voila!!!
ReplyDelete--Margaret