The {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 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:

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 

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

 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.