Comments on: leite’s consummate chocolate chip cookie

By: Lola

Lola — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 06:05:12 +0000

WOW these are GOOD!
Seriously – thought Alton Brown’s CHEWY was the tops… but
THIS recipe has even trumped that! Don’t stray and make substitutions…
this is a pretty perfect, unique recipe!

By: Anne

Anne — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:11:40 +0000

Perfect. And totally runs circles around Cook’s “perfect chocolate chip cookies,” which I can never get to turn out right. The overnight rest is definitely worth it.

By: Francheska

Francheska — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 16:53:29 +0000

Some substitutions are just not meant to be made!

By: Leticia M

Leticia M — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:55:54 +0000

I have something very important to say!
Do not eat the aged cookie dough! Do not test the cookie dough! I am surprised no one has commented or warned on this, but it’s very important.
I have had salmonella from raw cookie dough. If you eat immediately the salmonella will have not developed, but after resting in the fridge, you could have a hefty amount of poison in your cookie dough. Of course baked is fine. But don’t give in to taste the dough when scooping.
Phew. Just trying to save you all from waking up at two or three am to the unpleasantness of your stomach contents headed out the way they went in.
Moving on..
I made these cookies and am not sold on the idea of them being the most perfect cookies in the world. I just read all 175 comments and it seems I am certainly a minority.
I was so excited about “”the real magic,” he added, “is the one-and-a-half-inch ring between them where the two textures and all the flavors mix.”” as Mr Rubin talks about in the NYT article.
But I haven’t been blown away. I am interested in tweaking the cookies and trying again- perhaps purchasing the cake and bread flours- because the cookies were good. They were interesting. A bit different than my regular homemade cookies.
Here’s what I did:
-Used all purpose flour (weighed, not measured) for both types of flour
-used sea salt IN the cookies as coarse salt
-Dug into my stash of individual wrapped lindt chocolates, using both ecuador(75%) and madagascar (65%) with the emphasis on the madagascar, breaking each chocolate in half
-I did not sprinkle salt on top of the cookies.
I tried the dough. It was awful. I tried it again, and got a crystal of salt. Ew. I was just trying the dough and avoiding the chocolate, because the chocolate is so good anyway, and I already know that.
So I baked two cookies. As they were baking they seemed to have the aroma of bleach. I think I slightly overbaked them- just slightly. I ate one. It was mediocre. Aside from being much more chocolatey than my regular cookies, nothing amazing. Big and chocolatey, I should hope so, when I’m putting lindt in cookies instead of chocolate chips!
Then I put the bowl in the fridge to let the flour absorb the egg.
When I went to scoop some cookies for breakfast this morning (to go along with my fruit loops) they were so freakin hard to scoop. Like almost impossible. So I only did five cookies (small cookies) and I ate them all today. I thought I might share, but I didn’t.
So- I ate five, they must be pretty good right? Well, I think it was the chocolate content that kept me eating. They were just too salty. The texture was interesting, but needed development of some kind. The chocolate got in the way of my exploring the texture.
I am of course going to make the rest of the cookies at some point. (I froze the dough. I am afraid to keep it in my fridge too long. I hate food poisoning.)
I am thinking about experimenting with pasteurized eggs. I am also wondering if freezing the dough is going to affect the cookies. I find that after reading the article and trying these cookies I am left with questions about how to perfect cookies, rather than being satisfied that it has been accomplished.

By: ashley h

ashley h — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:30:28 +0000

Myra, it could be that you live in a lower altitude, therefore you need to decrease your flour (just by like 2 T though.) If thats not the case, make sure you measured the cake flour correctly (2 C minus 2 T) and the bread flour correctly (1 2/3 C) and leveled the flour off w/ a knife off the measuring cups. Also you could try using large or Xlarge eggs next time you make these if your batter came out too stiff the 1st time

By: ashley h

ashley h — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:23:18 +0000

MLA, I cant beleive you’d call these cookies “cakey”. there is not too much flour (for the butter ratio.) i made these this morning and they turned out pefect and puffy and chewy and beautiful. If there were any less flour in the recipe, the cookies would’ve turned out flat and spread too much, kind of like the way that your cookies look! Sorry, but its the truth

By: ashley h

ashley h — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 08:01:16 +0000

These are gorgeous!!! tHE TEXturem, the chocolate, everything. Im gonna make these tomorrow!!!

By: grace

grace — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 21:02:10 +0000

i just gasped audibly.

By: Myra

Myra — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 06:28:22 +0000

These cookies look amazing! But I baked them up this morning, and they came out tall and slightly puffy – not at all like in your photos. Do you have any suggestions?
Thanks :=)

By: Marilee

Marilee — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 03:51:38 +0000

Hey Deb? This is probably a stupid question, but in step #2, where it says to cream the butter and sugars for about 5 minutes, what speed on my KitchenAid do I use? Thanks. ^_^