http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=448060&highlight=ginger+snaps
Toll House? Pah! Lame, compared to the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie:
These are NOT your mother’s chocolate chip cookies. Anything else pales by comparison. The end product screams for a glass of milk and will satisfy even the biggest chocoholic. These cookies are about 4-5” in diameter, gooey in the middle and crunchy on the outer edge, like gourmet cookies should be. The recipe calls for two types of flour, but I’ve been successful using only bread flour. In a perfect world, you would measure by weight, rather than volume, but either way works. I’ve also used salted butter instead of unsalted and the end result is still tasty. Do NOT substitute for the chocolate.
Refrigerating the dough is essential to a good product. It allows the flour to absorb the liquid and results in the texture noted above. Sprinkling with salt is optional. Makes about two dozen cookies.
2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour (8-1/2 oz)
1-2/3 cups bread flour (8-1/2 oz)
1-1/4 tsp baking soda
1-1/2 tsp baking powder
1-1/2 tsp coarse salt
2-1/2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1-1/4 cups light brown sugar (10 oz)
1 cup plus 2 TBSP granulated sugar (8 oz)
2 large eggs (immerse in warm water for five minutes to bring to room temperature)
2 tsp vanilla extract (not imitation)
1-1/4 pounds bittersweet chocolate disks, at least 60% cacao content
Sea salt (optional)
Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside. Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugars together until very light, about five minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients quickly and mix until just combined, 5-10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them by hand without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against the dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper (unless you’re using non-stick pans). Scoop six 3-1/2 oz mounds of dough (think large golf ball) onto the baking sheet. Sprinkle lightly with the sea salt (if desired) and bake until golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer to wire rack to cool.
I don’t know that I disagree, but I’d be interested to know what people think is the draw- for me it’s the non-chocolate part of the cookie. The chocolate’s nice and all, but a good chocolate chip cookie is a thing of wonder because of the amazingly delicious brown sugar-butter-flour-vanilla-salt amalgam itself. And actually, I prefer it with toffee chips, so does that mean I disagree?
Substitute the ginger for chocolate chips. Comes out perfectly!
Maaaan, you are right about that. What a dirty, dirty trick.
As for all of these posts about oatmeal raisin or peanut butter cookies being the best…reported for trolling.
I’m salivating right now just thinking about this kind. And I agree that there is no biscuit superior to the chocolate chip kind. My current favourite variation is a white chocolate and macadamia version but that fancy will pass and I’ll go back to desiring the normal kind.
In the rankings of “best cookie”, it’s a 118-way tie for first place. Chocolate chip is among those 118, so there is technically no cookie superior to it.
Snickerdoodles are a worthy second place, but nothing tops chocolate chip.
Part of the reason snickerdoodles are so good is because of the existence of chocolate chip cookies. The experience of eating a chocolate chip cookie, once you do it once, is hard wired into your brain, and the experience of eating any other type of cookie is enhanced by the unconscious memory. The act of “eating cookies” itself produces an extra sense of pleasure based on the fact that at some time in your life you had chocolate chip cookies.
Danke schoen!
Cherry chip cookies
Molasses cookies
Ginger snaps
plain Sugar cookies
Oatmeal cookie dough
Chocolate chip cookies
Yeah, you read that right.
Hey, no disrespect for Samoas, and I do love me some Thin Mints, but I gotta agree with the O.P.
I also hate when I’m anticipating a delicious chocolate chip cooky* but bite instead into an oatmeal raisin one. I’ve seen cookies suck before, but raisin cookies are the suckiest bunch of sucks that ever sucked.
*a perfectly acceptable alternate spelling of cookie
“No matter how many varieties/ingredients you try, you just can’t beat a chocolate chip cookie.”
Agree!
While I do love the perfection of flavor and texture that is a well made chocolate chip cookie, I have to say that chocolate caramel shortbread is my very favorite. ATK’s brown sugar cookies are also quite perfect as cookies go.
But since my favorite is fussy and expensive, out of the last 10 batches of cookies I’ve made, 9 of them have been chocolate chip. No one complained. Crispy on the edges, chewy in the middle and just very slightly under baked. sigh. So lovely, so quick, so cheap. CCC are pretty darn fabulous.
Gotta agree with the OP.
Cookies = chocolate chip in whatever form of glory.
However, at Christmas, a shortbread cookie or two seems to define the season.
So, given that said shortbread cookie is rich, buttery and melt-in-the-mouth delicious. I will make a seasonal exception.
Chocolate Chip Cookies are the quick rough sex of the cookie world and they’re good as far as that goes but Madelines are the refined way to do it.
The passion and complexities involved, hours of foreplay, the rare air of that higher level of cookiedom.
You know that’s what you really want.
Besides, no one ever wept over a chocolate chip cookie.
In a similar vein, I’ll occasionally add about 1/3 cup of very finely ground coffee (Turkish ground if you want to get snooty) to the butter after beating. The resulting cookie is as dark as a double-chocolate cookie and has a really intense bitter coffee flavor that somebody once described to me as a spiritual experience. Plus they pack a significant caffeine kick.
The recipe or the cookies? I believe you’ve had the cookies before? Besides, I don’t think they ship well. And trying to get my boss to actually let me have some time off in the UK is not the easiest thing in the world!
Oh, Sandra lee, you knock-kneed, big boobed, blonde food bimbo how I love you.
As if by some strange culinary Kismet, this morning I found myself watching Sandra Lee making New York Cheesecake cookies on the Food Network. They are essentially CC Cookie dough made with Crushed Graham Crackers, hollowed out and filled with cheesecake batter. Don’t see how chocolate chips could hurt, or even substitute your best CC cookie dough recipe and leave out the graham crackers…
My favorite version is the Cowboy Cookie with chocolate chips, oatmeal, peanut butter, and pecans. It’s like four cookies in one!