This weekend we decided to go on a search for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe. I’ve been using a few different recipes over the past few years but I haven’t settled on one as a go-to recipe that reliably makes excellent cookies. So we set out to find that go-to recipe. We invited a few friends over to taste-test and drink wine and generally be witnesses to the mess that is cooking a million cookies. We picked 5 recipes to test run: “The Cookies” from NYT Cooking (Salted Butter Chocolate Chunk Shortbread), Carly’s classic chocolate chip recipe, the “perfect chocolate chip cookie” from America’s Test Kitchen, salted peanut butter-pretzel-chocolate chip cookies from Cook’s Country, and thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies (also from Cook’s Country).
I have to say that this was simultaneously easier and harder than I expected. As the person baking the cookies, it was pretty easy to keep everything straight. I started with The Cookies because they have to set in the fridge for 2 hours. Then the salted peanut butter-pretzel-chocolate chip cookies because that dough had to set in the fridge for 1 hour. After that I worked through the cookies one at a time. Brandon was in charge of dishes, documenting our adventure on social media, and keeping the finished cookies separated and labeled. That was probably a more confusing set of jobs–mostly because it was difficult to easily name and remember which cookie/recipe was which. Cookies largely look the same when you take them out of the oven and calling the recipes by numbers wasn’t super effective since the first two doughs came out of the oven at the end of the day.
I’ve learned to enjoy baking (weirdly enough, baking bread is what made me start to like baking) recently, despite some of my earlier… snafus with baking. (Like the time I misread the labels on the butter and added two cups of butter instead of one and ended up with one giant terrible-tasting cookies.) So it was fun to get to bake so much while hanging out with friends and talking and drinking some wine.
When it came time to taste-test everyone started with one of each cookie and a notecard. We ranked each cookies from 1 to 5 to determine our favorites. The ranking came out as follows: The Cookies, thick and chewy, pretzel peanut butter, Carly’s cookies, and finally the perfect cookie. Personally, I didn’t love the thick and chewy cookies, but I lost out to the crowd. I was happy to find that the cookies that took over Instagram were truly worth it–they looked super impressive when they were finished but weren’t actually that difficult to bake and were delicious!
We ended up with 135 cookies. One hundred thirty five. Cookies. Even after taste-testing and sending everyone who came over home with at least two of each cookie, we still have an absurd number of cookies leftover. So if anyone wants some cookies please let me know!
xoxo,
J
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