Double Take: Crispy, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Crispy, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies served on a cake plate

Welcome to week two of the month: Featured Blogger week! For today's post, Tabitha and I not only picked a blogger, but a theme: COOKIES. (Make sure you read that word with a Cookie Monster accent) I adore cookies, but I tend to stick pretty faithfully to two recipes.

1. Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies
2. Reese's Peanut Butter Chip Chocolate Cookies

They are both good cookies, though as we learned earlier, they don't always translate well with non-American ingredients. I have definitely become a fan of chilling my cookie dough and did so for this recipe as well.

So which blogger did we pick?! One of my all-time favorites to read: Smitten Kitchen. Deb has a lovely blog and is currently writing editing her first cookbook. I'll be purchasing a copy when it comes out and hope you will, too! Smitten Kitchen is very accessible to even the novice cook. She uses simple ingredients and will tell you where to buy things if she thinks it might not be available to everyone. She does live in New York City so her idea of simple might not completely match with your idea of simple, but overall I think she has a marvelous blog. I'm also a sucker for her hidden links. With every post she'll embed a link to a picture of her deliciously cute son. If she forgets, she generally has a comment from a reader within minutes reminding her to link it!

Deb has MANY cookie recipes, but the one that caught my eye was (naturally) a chocolate chip cookie recipe. I've seen it on a few other blogging sites, and it originally came from allrecipes.com. With a Superbowl party coming up, I knew this one would go over well.

Because you're starting with melted butter, the batter will look
a little different from your typical cookie batter.

Crispy, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Deb of Smitten Kitchen, originally from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Directions:

1. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended.
2. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended.
3. Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon. Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time (for giant cookies) or a tablespoon at a time (for smaller cookies) onto the greased or parchment-lined cookie sheets. Cookies should be about three inches apart.
4. Chill cookies overnight (at least) in the fridge. If you don't have room in your fridge for cookies spaced out on a cookie sheet, form two logs out of the dough and refrigerate the logs, wrapped in plastic wrap. You can easily slice and bake when you are ready.
5. When you are Preheat the oven to 325°F (165°C). Pull the dough or cookies out of the fridge and prep your sheets if needed. Slice cookie dough if needed, arranging cookies three inches apart. 
6. Bake larger cookies for 15 to 17 minutes, or 10 to 12 minutes for smaller ones (check your cookies before they’re done; depending on your scoop size, your baking time will vary) in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. It's better to err on the side of undercooked for these cookies. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

I put mine in zippered freezer bags since I was out of plastic wrap.

THOUGHTS:
The vanilla was overpowering in these cookies, so I reduced it accordingly in the recipe above. I LOVED the texture of the cookies. They are indeed crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. I also enjoyed the chocolate to cookie ratio in these cookies, and I rarely use a whole bag of chocolate chips for my cookies. I used Ghiradelli semi-sweet chips, but I think the cookies would benefit from a darker chocolate. Mhmm, dark chocolate.

Wondering about the difference between the Ghiradelli and Nestle Toll House semisweet chips? Bender and I did a taste test after we got a bag of each in Germany. They do indeed taste different. Nestle Toll House semisweet chocolate chips are sweeter than their Ghiradelli counterpart.

VERDICT:
Too-much-vanilla-but-the-texture-is-perfect: 1 vote
I-prefer-your-other-recipe-but-I'll-eat-these-anyway: 1 vote
Yum: 2 votes
I-would-have-preferred-them-straight-out-of-the-oven: 1 vote

COOKIES!

To see Tabitha's Cookies from Smitten Kitchen, head on over to Double the Garlic!