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The {Great} Chocolate Chip Cookie Challenge

February 18, 2019 by SouthernShelle 13 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 (unsalted butter, salted butter and olive oil), flour (all purpose mostly, but also cake and bread flour), raising agents (some combination of baking soda, salt and baking powder), 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.   The warmer the butter the more likely the cookies would be spending time chilling in the fridge. 
    2. Room Temperature eggs v. straight from the fridge eggs.   Normally you want room temperature eggs when you make a cake, so I was sort of surprised by this. 
    3. Is chilling the dough required?   See the note about the butter above.  The cookies that were refrigerated tended to not spread on the cookie sheet and had more lift.   I am on Team #chillthecookiedough
    4. Baking 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. Lots of tuperware containers-- what was I thinking!?!!  You need a lot of storage when making 12 dozen cookies.
    4. Cookie Sheets -- full sized sheet pans are a dream come true.
    5. Parchment paper.  This is the workhorse of my kitchen.  It makes clean up a breeze.
  3. Extra Ingredients
    1. Cornstarch or milk make cookies softer and add to the chewy-factor. 
    2. Water as an ingredient creates a thin, crispy cookie
    3.  Molasses to add an extra punch.  Molasses in a chocolate chip cooke is so underrated. 
    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 Cookie 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 CCC,  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. If you've been baking with salted butter and not telling people about it-- this is your time to shine 🙂

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:

  • Oatmeal Chai Chocolate Chip Cookies
    Oatmeal Chai Chocolate Chip Cookies
  • Double Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
    Double Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
  • Cake Batter Cookies
    Cake Batter Cookies
« Croissants {Progress Post}
"Neiman Marcus" Chocolate Chip Cookie »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. helene

    October 03, 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 06, 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 08, 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
  7. Kelly

    December 23, 2021 at 1:37 pm

    If you’re going to do this again, Crisco has a good chocolate chip cookie recipe also!

    Reply
    • SouthernShelle

      January 18, 2022 at 5:29 pm

      I did not know that Crisco has a good recipe. Filing this away for the next CCC to try! Thanks for sharing 🙂

      Reply
  8. Rebecca

    January 02, 2022 at 3:20 pm

    I just found this, coming from your gingerbread cookie version… a little late to the game, but I’m a geek so wanted to share that the current Nestle Tollhouse recipe has been modified over the the years to suit changing preference from crispy cookies to soft ones, and much larger than the original.

    Short version: The “authentic” cookie is tiny, crispy, and only has 12oz. of chocolate per batch. (Which makes it ironic Tates Bakeshop seems “innovative”, as other than size, they’re the closest thing on the market to the original!)

    It took me a long time to find a true original version of the Ruth Wakefield’s Tollhouse Inn Chocolate Crunch cookie recipe from the ‘30s. Here’s the original:
    http://www.thecookingphotographer.com/2009/05/ruth-wakefield-toll-house-and.html?m=1

    NOTES::
    1. chocolate chips were invented by Nestle *after* this cookie recipe went viral… Nestle created them in partnership with Ruth, and that’s when the recipe went on the back of the bag.

    2. the original cookies were “HALF TEASPOON” sized drop cookies… they were tiny! Thus, the recipe makes 100 cookies!

    3. today’s recipe specifies “2 large eggs”, but at the time of writing, most eggs were *medium* sized, and especially if you double the batch size, the extra liquid changes the texture.

    4. today’s dark brown sugar looks like the light brown sugar off my childhood (I’m 48), so if you want a richer flavor, use Demerara brown sugar.

    5. We always melted the butter and let it cool before crabbing with the sugar - this creates a crisper cookie, without shortening.

    6. My mother ground pecans into a fine powder, rather than chopped, and she swears that’s what had people taking her for years they couldn’t get the same flavor - you have to be careful to let people know there’s nuts in them if you do this as they’re invisible, but it really gives the most amazing flavor throughout the cookies… in fact, even without chocolate, they’re amazing.

    7. To further aid in crisping them, remove from the cookie sheet to a torn open brown paper bag, or brown craft paper, to cool. This absorbs some of the oil, increasing crispness.

    Also worth reading, a reprint article from New England Magazine… https://newengland.com/today/food/original-toll-house-cookies/

    Reply
    • SouthernShelle

      January 18, 2022 at 5:34 pm

      I LOVE nerding out on cookie recipes! I am intrigued by the half teaspoon sized cookies and the Demerara sugar substitute! And this paper bag trick! That's definitely going on the list.

      Reply

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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 ...

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