Adapted from
The New York Times, David Leite, and Jacques Torres. (via Orangette)
If you have a kitchen scale, I highly recommend using it here. This recipe is written in both volume and weight, but I chose to use the latter, so that I wouldn’t have to mess with measuring cups. It was unbelievably quick: just put a bowl on top of the scale, tare it to zero, and go.
2 cups minus 2 Tbsp. (8 ½ oz.) cake flour
1 2/3 cups (8 ½ oz.) bread flour
1 ¼ tsp. baking soda
1 ½ tsp. baking powder
1 ½ tsp. coarse salt, such as kosher
2 ½ sticks (1 ¼ cups; 10 oz.) unsalted butter, softened
1 ¼ cups (10 oz.) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. (8 oz.) granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 ¼ pounds bittersweet chocolate chips or chunks, preferably about 60% cacao content, such as
Ghirardelli
Sea salt, such as Maldon
Combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Whisk well; then set aside.
Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars until very light and fluffy, about 3 to 5 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed. Reduce the mixer speed to low; then add dry ingredients, and mix until just combined. (Unless you have a plastic guard that sits around the rim of the bowl, this will make a big mess at first, with flour flying everywhere. I found that carefully holding a dish towel around the top of the bowl helped a lot.) Add the chocolate chips, and mix briefly to incorporate. Press plastic wrap against the dough, and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. The dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
When you’re ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F. Remove the bowl of dough from the refrigerator, and allow it to soften slightly. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.
Using a standard-size ice cream scoop – mine holds about 3 fluid ounces, or about 1/3 cup – scoop six mounds of dough onto the baking sheet, making sure to space them evenly. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt, and bake until golden brown but still soft, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer the baking sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then transfer the cookies onto the rack to cool a bit more.
Repeat with remaining dough.
Note: I may be the only person in the world who feels this way, but I like room-temperature chocolate chip cookies better than warm ones. (Yes, I fully expect to be burned at the stake for saying this.) When they’re warm, they taste too rich to me, and some of the nuances of their flavor get lost. I suggest that you try these cookies both ways and decide for yourself.
Yield: About 24 (5-inch) cookies.
econd, I didn’t use a mixture of cake and bread flours, as the recipe suggests. Leite’s article failed to explain why the use of two flours is important, and I don’t know, it just seemed like a fussy complication. I have no doubt that it probably does something, texture-wise, but I was willing to take a risk, so I skipped it. Instead, I used a local flour that we’ve been trying lately. It’s called Stone-Buhr Northwest-Grown All-Purpose Flour, and if you can find it, I highly recommend it. Otherwise, you might try your regular brand of all-purpose flour, or, as Leite recommends, a combination of cake and bread flours.
Lastly, after the dough had its 36 hours in the fridge, I let it soften a little bit at room temperature before I tried to scoop it. It was very hard when freshly chilled, but with about 30 minutes’ to one hour’s rest on the counter, it was more readily scoopable. Don’t let the dough get warm, though; you want to bake it while it’s still cool, and even tending toward cold. Updated on June 15, 2011: I have changed the way I do this. I now scoop the dough before chilling it. Much easier. See below
Massachusetts Chocolate Chip Cookies - try this version
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup butter or margarine softened
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 3/4 cup brown sugar packed
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 1 2/3 cups semi-sweet chocolate morsels
- 1 cup nuts optional, chopped
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In a small bowl, mix the flour, the salt, and baking soda.
In a large bowl, cream the butter, the granulated sugar, the brown sugar, and the vanilla extract together until the mixture is smooth and creamy.
Add the eggs to the butter mixture, one at a time, and beat well after each addition.
Gradually fold the flour mixture into the butter mixture, being careful not to overmix.
Stir the chocolate chips and the nuts into the batter.
Drop the cookie dough by the tablespoon onto a baking sheet.
Bake the cookies until they are golden-brown, about 10 minutes.
Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for 2 minutes.
Transfer the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.
Serve
