Smitten Kitchen's "Our Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie"

There is nothing worse than making an unsatisfactory cookie.  For years now I have been looking for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe.  I even started making up my own recipes testing yolk’s vs. whole eggs and cake flour vs. regular flour, etc.  But to no avail, my search has continued.  I dream of a cookie that has crisp edges with a chewy middle filled with the perfect ratio of chocolate chips to cookie dough.  I do have a chocolate chip cookie recipe that I love, but it uses Crisco and since the trans-fat movement I have been looking for a butter only recipe.  Why does this have to be so difficult?!?!

This weekend I decided to try “Smitten Kitchen’s” chocolate chip cookie recipe.  I LOVE Smitten Kitchen.com.  When I moved to Charleston I joked that my new pastime would be to make every recipe on her blog.  I make her peanut sesame noodles every week and her chocolate peanut butter cake may be my favorite cake of all time.  Since I’ve had a great track record I thought that I had finally found “the one” and my search could end with Smitten Kitchen.

To answer your question… no, this is not the perfect chocolate chip cookie.  I feel like I must have missed an ingredient because I have that much faith in Smitten Kitchen, but I found that the cookie was crunchy with much to be desired.  The first weird thing was that it only took 1 stick of butter.  Now, it only made 27 cookies, so that could be why, but I thought it was weird that it used the regular amount of sugar and so little butter.  The butter was also supposed to be cool and creamed with the sugar, which Cook’s Illustrated says makes a cakier cookie - melted butter contributes to chewiness.  Or maybe it’s because I didn’t add the pecans; I didn’t have any, and I tend to not like nuts in my baked goods.  But either way this cookie was a disappointment.  It was yummy warm out of the oven, but once they cooled, they dried out and became brittle like biscotti.  Far from my dream cookie.  

Here is the recipe.  Maybe with the pecans it will be better, so if you give it a try let me know!  For now… my search continues. 

Smitten Kitchen’s “Our Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookie”:

½ cup sugar

½ cup firmly packed light brown sugar

8 Tbsp cold butter cut into pieces

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla

½ tsp baking soda

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

½ tsp salt

1 ½ cups chocolate chips

1 cup walnuts or pecans, toasted and chopped (these I left out)

Preheat the oven to 300F and adjust the baking rack to the top third of the oven.

Cream the sugar and butter together until smooth.  Mix in the egg, vanilla and baking soda.

Stir together the flour and salt, then miss them into the creamed butter/sugar mixtures.  Mix in the chocolate chips and nuts.

Form dough into 2-tablespoon balls and place 9 balls, spaced 4 inches apart, on each of the baking sheets.

Bake for 18 minutes, or until pale golden brown.  Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.

*** Note:  I want to make this very clear that while I was not impressed by this Smitten Kitchen recipe, I love the blog and I have found most of my favorite recipes on it.  Please do not let this sway you from trying any and all of her recipes!***