Chocolate Chip Cookies
Technically this is a triple-chip cookie: milk chocolate chips, dark or semi-sweet chips, and toffee chips. You can make these with a standard bag of chocolate chips instead if you would like. I really think it is worth the effort, and you will use any additional toffee bits or chocolate in the next batch. Suggestions of my favorite chocolate to use in the notes, if you are looking to level these up.
The dough freezes fantastically for these. I suggest making a batch and only baking as many as you will eat right once they cool off enough to handle. Then toss the other dough balls into a freezer bag. Cooking time is pretty much the same frozen or straight after resting in the fridge. Just keep an eye on the color of the cookies as some people like theirs more or less chewy or crisp.
This recipe is adapted from Alton Brown’s The Chewy Cookie, which in turn is just a take on the standard Toll House recipe.
Full Recipe Ingredients:
2 sticks (16 Tablespoons or 227 grams) Butter
2 ounces (57 grams) Granulated Sugar
8 ounces (227 grams) Brown Sugar
Either kind works
2 large Eggs
1 Whole, 1 just the Egg Yolk
2 Tablespoons Whole Milk
1.5 teaspoons Vanilla Extract
12 ounces (340 grams) Bread Flour
All Purpose will also be fine
1 teaspoon Salt
You can reduce if using salted butter
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
12 ounces (340 grams) of Chips/Chunks
I use a 3-way split between Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, and Toffee Bits
Tools:
Cookie or baking trays
Cooling racks (optional)
Parchment paper or other non-stick lining(optional)
Hand or Stand mixer (optional)
Steps:
Melt the butter and beat together with the sugars for a couple of minutes. Ideally you will want to do this with the paddle on a stand mixer, but you can use a hand mixer. The mixture should start to look slightly airy and lighter.
Work the rest of the wet ingredients, egg, vanilla and milk, into the butter and sugar mixture. You will want a slower speed at first to avoid splashing. Make sure everything is evenly incorporated.
Mix the dry ingredients (minus the chips) in another bowl until uniform.
Incorporate the dry ingredients into the wet ones. It may be easier to do this a little bit at a time, but mostly it depends on your tolerance for flour puffing out of your bowl. Scrape down the bowl, especially the sides and very bottom, at least a couple of times.
Finally, mix in the chips until well dispersed. If you have different size chips, I find that incorporating the smaller ones first before moving to the larger chunks is a bit easier.
Put the dough into your fridge to rest for at least an hour.
Preheat your oven to 375 F (around 190 C) and line your baking sheets with parchment or other non-stick liner. If you are cooking the full batch, or most of it, make sure to arrange the racks in your oven in the upper and lower third.
Once the oven is nearly ready and your dough has rested, scoop out 1.5 ounce (43 gram) portions of dough. Place as many as you intend to cook onto your sheets. A full recipe will fit 6 to a half-sheet tray pan, so you will need 4 trays or to bake two batches.
Freeze any extra dough portions in a zip top bag or other air tight container
Bake for around 10-12 minutes. If you like your cookies crisp, or if your oven runs cool, you may need as much as 15 minutes.
Rotate the trays half-way through the bake for even cooking.
Slide the parchment or other liners off the tray and onto a cooling rack once they are done. Careful - if your trays have a lip you may need to let the cookies set for a moment on the sheets so they will not crack as they slide over the lip.
They are ready to eat once they are cool enough to handle, about 5 minutes.
Notes
I have strong opinions on chocolate, having worked for a company making spicy chocolates for a couple of years. When baking, we are often using cocoa powder or baking chocolate, both of which have pretty limited options. But when it comes to chocolate chip cookies, you can really go wild.
My favorite brand of chocolate from my days working with it was Callebaut. Their chocolate is hard to find direct to consumer, though you can sometimes find it repacked in smaller containers at specialty stores like this one. Valrhona was a close second as well.
Callebaut and many other chocolate companies sell a format called Callets rather than chips, which are bigger and flatter, made for melting. You can use these as is if you like the idea of more concentrated chocolate in your cookies, or you can give them a rough chop. Another option is to buy your favorite chocolate bars and roughly chop that chocolate into pieces about the size of a standard chocolate chip.
I have also started to see Guittard, another stellar chocolate company, in grocery stores even as standard baking style chocolate chips. These are a great option if you are not interested in chopping chocolate at all. I do suggest at the very least seeing if you can find some milk chocolate chips along with the standard semi-sweet or dark chips, as the contrast really makes this recipe stand out from the crowd.
Toffee bits have less variety. One day I will learn to make my own English Toffee and will just chop some of that up for use in cookies. For now, I just use what I can get.