The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies You’ll Ever Make (Bakery-Quality)

Epicurious

In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef Lish Steiling demonstrates how to make the best chocolate chip cookies at home.

Transcript

00:00I'm Lish Styling, I'm a professional chef, and today I'm going to show you how to make

00:04bakery quality cookies at home. Today we're baking decadent, crispy on the edges,

00:11soft and gooey in the center, chocolate chip cookies. This is Chocolate Chip Cookies 101.

00:18This cookie has a slightly crispy edge where it's almost a little caramelized in texture,

00:24and the middle stays nice and soft. These cookies actually come together as a dough

00:28much faster than a normal cookie, but it does have to be refrigerated or frozen for about an

00:34hour before baking, and it makes a huge difference. It lets the dough hydrate,

00:38it just lets all the flavors marry and meld, so it yields a really good bakery cookie.

00:46I'm going to start by mixing together the dry ingredients. I'm using bread flour here,

00:52385 grams of it. I prefer bread flour for these cookies because it guarantees a softer,

00:58chewier center. So I'm using a scale just because weighing is the most accurate method of getting

01:05this consistent cookie every time you bake. There's a lot less room for error, and you get

01:10a bakery style cookie that's reliable. So I have baking powder and baking soda here,

01:15and they're both 3 grams. So we use both leavening agents in here because they both

01:21do different things. Both are leaveners, but the baking powder also helps tenderize the cookies,

01:25so that you get that nice crumb. You want them to be evenly distributed throughout the dry

01:30ingredients because, god forbid, there's a pocket of baking powder or baking soda in a cookie,

01:35and then the 4 grams of kosher salt go in, and that's your dry ingredients. I'm starting with

01:40226 grams of butter. I actually start with all of my ingredients cold. When you start with cold

01:47butter, you get layers of pockets of, like, steam. Like pie dough or croissant dough, right? So you

01:53get this, like, layered effect. I'm just gonna shmear it around. I'm not trying to cream it,

01:58like, really quick. So I'm just shmearing the butter here and right there. You can see it's

02:08loosened up a little bit, but it's not actually whipped. You're not getting air into it. That

02:13was, like, 15 seconds, and that's all that it takes. On to sugars. We have 200 grams of light

02:19brown sugar here. Light brown adds sweetness, but also softness in the cookie, all relating back to

02:24that tender center. And 145 for granulated sugar. It's a nice balance of flavors. The brown sugar

02:32making them a little bit softer. You also add that undertone of molasses. So they both have their

02:37roles just adding sweetness or adding more character and tenderizing and making it delicious.

02:43You're just gonna shmear it together. You don't actually want to cream it.

02:49Right about there. I don't want to overmix it because I want to keep that butter cold.

02:53So the texture right now, you can see, it's almost like the butter is just coated in the sugar.

02:58That's what we're looking for. So we have eggs. I'm gonna crack into a bowl so that we make sure

03:06that there's no shell. Two eggs. 10 grams of pure vanilla extract. At this point,

03:12it's actually gonna look kind of separated and broken, but just trust the process.

03:23You can see there's still a little bit of butter in there. It's kind of broken a little bit. Looks

03:30a little separated, if you will. That's okay. It's gonna come together now. All of the dry

03:37ingredients are in at once. So just very slow, bring it together. You're gonna just beat it

03:43until it just comes together. There should still be a few streaks of flour in it. If you over

03:47develop the gluten, you'll get a tough cookie. Nobody wants a tough cookie. There's still a

03:52little bit of flour visible, but that's okay because we are now going to add our chocolate.

03:57We have two kinds of chocolate. 145 grams of bittersweet chocolate and 140 grams of semi-sweet

04:04chocolate. You can use milk chocolate, you can use white chocolate, whatever kind you want. I

04:10love the hand chop. I think that it gives you pockets of oozy melted chocolate, gives you

04:17little shards of chocolate and specks of chocolate throughout the cookie. You could absolutely use

04:22chocolate chips in this. My suggestion would be to hand chop about half of the chips so that you

04:29get some of those little shards. This is what it looks like when it actually all comes together.

04:33It's now cohesive, but there are still little specks of butter and all of that chocolate is

04:38distributed in. So the key here is, again, not to over mix the dough because you want those little

04:44specks of butter in there. You don't want it creamed and distributed throughout where it's

04:48going to be a little melty. This looks perfect. So we're ready to weigh our cookies. We're going to

04:53go for about 120 grams per cookie. So these are big cookies. This is similar to Levene style,

05:01not quite as biscuity. I am using a half cup measure here because it's about the size of what

05:09the cookie will be. You can do it by hand. I just prefer not to use a scoop. A scoop makes it almost

05:16too perfect, right? You're going to have the perfect round cookie. I like perfectly imperfect. So here

05:21are our 120 gram cookies all weighed out. Popping them in the freezer for about an hour because I

05:27want the dough to rest and absorb and let all the flavors marry, but also so that they don't bake

05:33too quickly when you put them in the oven. The outside will be a slightly frozen so they'll keep

05:37a little bit of their texture and their height. Exactly what we want.

05:44These cookies are fresh out of the freezer. Nice and cold and firm. Now they're going in the oven

05:50375 for about 19 minutes. You want to rotate them halfway through. Keep an eye on them. Might go a

05:57little bit longer or a little bit less, but 19 tends to be the sweet spot. Let's go.

06:08Warm cookies. I like to give them a little smack just because it settles them and kind of

06:14encourages those little craggly bits. These were in for about 19 minutes. I rotated them halfway

06:19through. So you've got to take a look at this, right? All of the craggly bits, these edges, they're

06:25not perfect. It's still a round cookie. Don't get me wrong, but it has all these little crispy bits

06:30and the characters of the peaks and valleys on the top. We're going to try to let these rest

06:35for 10 minutes on the tray and then move them to a wire rack. These cookies in particular,

06:40I tend to remove when the center still looks slightly underbaked. You can tell just by

06:45pressing on it. It should be pretty much set around the edges, but still a little soft in

06:50the middle, and that's exactly where these are. If the center is completely loose where it's liquid

06:56molten, that's a little too underdone, but a little slightly under is good in this case. You can really

07:01tell just by looking at it if it's underdone. You'll see a difference in the finish of the cookie.

07:07It will be more glossy in the very underdone part versus matte where it's baked. I'm moving them over

07:14to a wire rack to cool completely because at this point they've now carried over as much as I want

07:19them to on the warm tray, and now I want them to just completely cool without any residual heat.

07:24I think it's time to taste. Let's see what we have here.

07:30Chocolatey goodness. Look at that. Should I take a bite? I think so.

07:37Soft in the middle, crunchy on the outside. Look at that chocolate. Look at those pockets.

07:44Don't you just want to eat the whole tray? This cookie is so worth making it at home. It's warm

07:51chocolate chip cookies whenever you want. You can freeze them individually, bake off one or two,

07:56fresh whenever you want it. You're in control for a delicious chocolate chip cookie.

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