Choc-Chip Cookies
PORTION SIZE
Makes about 15 cookiesINGREDIENTS & TOOLS
180g strong white bread flour
½ tsp baking powder (not bicarb of soda)
¼ tsp fine salt
115g unsalted butter, softened
75g caster sugar
40g light soft brown or light Muscovado sugar
35g demerara sugar
1 large egg (about 65g)
Seeds of 1/2 vanilla pod or ½ tsp vanilla extract/paste
170g Guittard chocolate chips (half dark, half milk is nice)
Zest of 1 large orange (optional)
Requires a baking sheet or a shallow roasting tin, 3-4cm deep
SUBSTITUTING!
Flour - you can easily substitute plain flour for bread flour here. The bread flour just has a higher protein content, adding that touch more ‘chew’ to the finished result, but you will still get a great cookie with plain flour too.
Butter - I often replace the unsalted butter with salted butter, and when I do, I omit the salt. To make it dairy-free, Stork or any other vegan block fat can work too, though it does change the flavour a bit.
Sugar - the combination of different sugars is the result of my experimenting, giving a result between crunchy shell and gooey interior, but its not a big deal if you only have one or two of them. Just keep to the overall quantity of sugar in the recipe, and substitute for other sugars to use what you have.
METHOD
Weigh and sift the flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl.
Cream the butter and all sugars together until light and fluffy – this will take about 5 minutes with an electric whisk on high speed. With the whisk on slow, add the egg and vanilla extract. Zest the orange directly over the mixture if you are using it. Fold in the flour and chocolate chips with a metal spoon, then your hands. By the end you should end up with quite a soft and tacky dough that will be tricky to handle.
Flour the surface with no more than 1 tbsp flour and turn the dough onto it, forming into a log, about 25cm x 5cm. Then either wrap in clingfilm or place in an airtight container and chill for at least 2 hours until firm.
*************** WAIT 2 HOURS **************
Using a serrated bread knife and a ruler, make slices from the log that are about 1-1.3cm wide - the below timing is calibrated for this size of cookie. Space them about 1 cm apart on the trays – they don’t really spread much.
NOTE! It may seem pedantic to measure out the cookie dough but it is the best way of matching the size to what I intend, and therefore the below timing should produce the correct result. Cookies are so small that even 10g less and 1 minute longer can change the end result quite a lot.
Bake at the bottom of the oven for:
12-13 minutes for a soft-bake cookie (they should look very lightly browned at the edges, but overall, still quite pale)
14-16 minutes for a cookie with a distinctly crispy shell, and firmer interior (they should look browned all over)
They will still seem a bit puffed up and somewhat soft when you take them out, but they will firm up quite a lot as they cool, and also deflate slightly, which I think gives that classic ‘look’ of a soft-bake cookie.
Remove them from the oven. Let them cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheets and then transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool, at least a little, before eating. They are absolutely delicious warm, when they will be at their softest, and they will firm up as they cool, though they should retain the gooey interior for up to 1 day after baking.
STORAGE
Like most biscuits, once baked, these will keep very well in an airtight container (with a few sugar cubes for company but never a cake) for about 4-5 days. Not as fresh or gooey as right after baking, but still delish.
These also freeze excellently once baked.
You can store the raw cookie dough log in the fridge for about a week, just slicing off as many as you want to bake.
If you can bear to wait, try refrigerating the raw cookie dough for 24-48 hours before baking. During this time, some of the starches in the flour will begin to break down into sugars. The result will be cookies that are chewier, more deeply coloured and with a toffee taste