Monday, August 13, 2007

Variations in Chocolate Chip Cookies

A while back, Cathy over at CFO posted on chocolate chip cookies. She likes the thin and crispy. My husband, in my experience, likes most desserts a little crunchy (some might call it burnt around the edges, he calls it delightful). I tend to hover around soft and chewy, but I'm generally just happy when cookies are in arm's reach :-)

I got some good cookie tips from an episode of Good Eats where he made each of the three recipes. This episode cleared up the scientific aspects of the variations in ingredients for the hundreds of chocolate chip cookie recipes out there. And if I'm ever lacking or low on an ingredient, this has given me a bit of insight into how the results might change with an ingredient substitution.

Each recipe is listed on the website, but it doesn't include the following information from the episode. Here are his explanations for the ingredient adjustments that result in the cookie variations:

Thin & Crispy:
Add baking soda
Replace 1 or all eggs with milk
High ratio white to brown sugar
Use butter

Soft & cakey:
Use Cake flour
Baking powder (not baking soda)
Shortening (not butter)
Techniques: chill batter before baking and lay out a smaller cookie size

Chewy:
Melt butter
Use Bread flour
Hold back on egg whites
More (or all) brown sugar

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