• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Southern Shelle

  • Home
  • About
  • Recipes
  • Contact
  • Navigation Menu: Social Icons

    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Pinterest

The {Great} Chocolate Chip Cookie Challenge

February 18, 2019 by SouthernShelle 9 Comments

Have you ever searched for a chocolate chip cookie recipe on Pinterest?  You will find 8 million recipes all declaring that this recipe is in fact THE BEST EVER.   Basically, some of y’all are lying. Especially since every recipe isn’t my favorite, the New York Times Chocolate Chip recipe.  {side bar} If I ever crossed paths with Jacques Torres, I would make a damn fool of myself. A. Damn. Fool. 

I did an unofficial poll of my friends and the results weren’t surprising either people loved the  Toll House Recipe or they have been infected by my fangirling and like the New York Times recipe. One of my 2019 baking goals is to expand my chocolate chip cookie horizons and try one of the million chocolate chip cookies on the internet.

1 weekend.  1 trip to Costco.  12 Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipes.

Acknowledgments: 

I’d like to thank my support system who made this little experiment possible:

My daughter, who helped make the dough until she found something better to do.

My husband who thought this was humorous until we ran out of freezer space.  

My sweet friends who answered my crazy text poll with links and recipes.

Big thanks to my co-workers for handling that many cookies.  Y’all are the real MVPs.

The Chocolate Chip Cookie Challenge Bracket

The best chocolate chip cookie is going to vary from person to person.  Maybe your momma made the Toll House cookies religiously and that’s why they are your favorite.  Or maybe oatmeal chocolate chip are your jam. To get a definitive answer, we need a scientific method for comparing cookies.  Which means we definitely need a fillable pdf Chocolate Chip Cookie Bracket.  In addition to the 12 recipes I made, I’ve added in 3 commercial cookies and 1 play in for those favorite recipes I don’t know about (yet).

Scroll down to see the contenders and my final bracket. 

Southern Shelle Chocolate Chip Cookie Challenge

The contenders:

King Arthur Department Store Cookies

Narrowing this list down was almost impossible.  The hardest decision was whether or not to include the BraveTart chocolate chip cookie.  Listen, I love Stella Parks. Love her, can’t get enough of her. I have baked the majority of her cookbook, so I decided to not make her cookie (not because it isn’t awesome) because  the whole point of this exercise was to try new things.

 So here is the extensive recipe list:

  1. The New York Times, Jacques Torres 
  2. Toll House, the recipe on the back of the bag
  3. Savory Sweet Life  Alice Currah, Alice’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe 
  4. King Arthur Flour “Department Store” aka Neiman Marcus
  5. Displaced Housewife, Rebecca Firth Dark Chocolate Olive Oil  Cookies
  6. Gimme Some Oven, Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
  7. Joy the Baker, Joy Wilson The Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
  8. America’s Test Kitchen – Brown Butter Chocolate Chip
  9. David Lebovitz Salted Butter Chocolate Chip 
  10. Levain CopyCat  from the famous Levain Bakery
  11. Alton Brown – The Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
  12. Tate’s Chocolate Chip from the legendary Tate’s Bake Shop 

 

Tate’s Bake Shop

The Goal:

  1. Try as many different techniques as possible.
  2. Limit extra ingredients.  Outside of the oatmeal in the King Arthur cookies, the recipes all involve fat, flour, raising agents, eggs, milk or water (occasionally), vanilla (or not), chocolate chips.  No M+Ms or salted caramel here.
  3. Follow the directions! These 12 recipes were carefully crafted to be made in a certain way– so that is what I did.  But let me tell you, it almost broke me because I think that all chocolate chip cookies should chill before they are baked.  It almost killed me to put the dough right in the oven. It wasn’t right!

Alton Brown Chewy Chocolate Chip

Observations:  

After making 12 different cookies, you start to see some patterns.   

  1. Temperature matters so much when you are making chocolate chip cookies.
    1. Cold butter, melted butter,  browned butter
    2. Room Temperature eggs v. straight from the fridge 
    3. Chilled Dough or no?
    4. Bake Temperature.  I saw 350º F; 360ºF and 375ºF.
  2. Equipment:
    1. Stand Mixer required?  The America’s Test Kitchen recipe was the only one that did not require a stand mixer. 
    2. Scale.  I already measure my ingredients, but for the Levain recipe, I found the scale extremely helpful to make that outrageous sized cookie.  (6 oz !!! )
  3. Extras
    1. Cornstarch or milk to make the cookie chewy
    2. Water as an ingredient creates a thin, crispy cookie
    3.  Molasses to add an extra punch
    4. Ground Oatmeal is a game changer.
    5. OLIVE. OIL.
  4. Noticeable exclusions
    1. The Levain cookies didn’t include vanilla. It felt wrong, but those cookies turned out so right.

Levain Bakery Copycat

The Results:

Honestly, I may never make another chocolate chip cookie in my entire life.   Just kidding. There are millions of other chocolate chip cookie recipes to try.   I am not going to sit here and declare a certain cookie to be the best ever or even perfect.  That’s how we got into this mess. Now instead of always making the NYT recipe, I might mix things up and make the David Lebovitz or Alton Brown cookies.   I loved the molasses in the Joy the Baker cookies- which makes me think it could be a cool cookie to leave out for Santa.

David Lebovitz Salted Butter

The olive oil cookie.  I loved it. LOVED IT. It was light and fluffy and the sea salt.  Sign me up. Meanwhile, my three year old hated it. She took a bite and then tried to put it back on the cookie tray.  This is definitely a grown-up/bougie cookie that you eat with a glass of wine.

Displaced Housewife Olive Oil Choc Chip Cookie

 

Being out of school for so long– it was fun to catch up with friends– through our debates about the best chocolate chip cookie.  This is the sentimental part of this post people. It was honestly great to connect with friends about something silly (but also important!) now that we’ve all moved away and have busy lives.

Gimme Some Oven Chewy Chocolate Chip

 Here’s my bracket: 

 

The hardest choice was between the Alton Brown Chewy and The Displaced Housewife Olive Oil.  It was such a hard call.    My friend Cate SWEARS by the Savory Sweet Life cookie, but compared to the Olive Oil, it didn’t stand a chance.  I was surprised at how much I loved the David Lebovitz cookie– because while I enjoy a good kosher salt on a cookie, I generally don’t like a lot of salt.

In the end though, I am still in love with my man Jacques.  The New York Times cookie is the best.  Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

 

Related Posts:

  • "Neiman Marcus" Chocolate Chip Cookie"Neiman Marcus" Chocolate Chip Cookie
  • Peppermint Triple Chocolate Chip CookiesPeppermint Triple Chocolate Chip Cookies
  • New York Times  Chocolate Chip CookiesNew York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies

Filed Under: Cookies, Feature Tagged With: Chocolate Chip Cookies; Great Chocolate Chip Cookie Challenge, Cookie Bracket, cookies

Previous Post: « Croissants {Progress Post}
Next Post: “Neiman Marcus” Chocolate Chip Cookie »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. helene

    October 3, 2019 at 3:39 am

    very nice well done thank you

    Reply
  2. Sun Sun

    October 11, 2019 at 6:46 am

    You are a woman after my own heart. I loved the article, you are a great writer, and the effort and detail appreciated. As someone with 3 gallon bags of different chocolate cookie dough balls in her freezer, I am on the hunt for the ideal chocolate chip cookie. I think I will live with the fact that there is a cookie for the occasion and keep trying out recipes,

    Reply
  3. Jennifer

    March 6, 2020 at 5:18 pm

    I LOVE that you went to Costco and spent your weekend doing this!! I’m definitely inspired and will be copying you. How else can you compare recipes if you’re only baking every so often?
    Thanks so much for a great post. I appreciate all the feedback you gave and will add a few of these recipes to my tests!
    Jennifer

    Reply
    • SouthernShelle

      March 19, 2020 at 8:04 pm

      It was such a fun weekend! Now that I have some time on my hands, I’m busy trying to come up with another challenge 🙂

      Reply
  4. cc ryan

    March 16, 2020 at 9:29 pm

    I love this experiment! Well done and thank you so much for all of your hard work! Can’t wait to try the NYT recipe!

    Reply
  5. Jennifer

    May 29, 2020 at 10:12 pm

    This is the best thing I have read since the Quarantine started. I love this! The science geek in me really appreciates the research and discoveries you have made. I knew I loved Jacques for a reason! I came here looking for the perfect recipe for my son to try. He and I are the ultimate cookie lovers in our home. We may or may not tell everyone else what we’re doing. Thanks for sharing this!

    Reply
    • SouthernShelle

      June 8, 2020 at 7:03 pm

      I’m glad you enjoyed it! It was a such a fun project that I’m probably going to need to come up with a round two. Keep checking back.

      Reply
      • Jalaiwachungas Ward

        October 14, 2020 at 1:25 pm

        I’m a Baker with a passion for baking and baking the old fashioned way from scratch, I love making cookies for my daughters in laws and they are amazed at how wonderful they taste.

        Reply
  6. ปั๊มไลค์

    May 31, 2020 at 7:59 am

    Like!! Really appreciate you sharing this blog post.Really thank you! Keep writing.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Hey, Y’all

I'm Richelle. I'm a working mom that got bit by the baking bug. When I'm not doing my day job, or cutting strawberries for my 5 year old, I'm probably in the kitchen throwing together some combination of flour, sugar and butter. Welcome to my baking journey.

{Great} Chocolate Chip Cookie Challenge

Have you ever searched for a chocolate chip cookie recipe on Pinterest?  You will find 8 million recipes all declaring that this recipe is in fact THE BEST EVER.   Basically, some of y’all are lying. Especially since every recipe isn’t my ...

Read More

Recent Bakes

Sweet Potato Cinnamon Rolls

Magic Cookie Bars

Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes

Brown Butter Beignets

Get These Recipes

delivered right to your inbox.

Privacy Policy

Archives

Footer

Follow Southern Shelle

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Charleston Girl. Runner (power walker is probably more accurate) Baker. Lawyer. Mama.

Sibling Baking Hijinks, Yes. Please!

Instagram did not return a 200.

@SisterSweetsBrotherBread

Copyright © 2021 Southern Shelle on the Foodie Pro Theme

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you continue to use this site we will assume that you are happy with it.Ok