What Is A Turtle Cookie
Turtle cookies usually contain chocolate chips, caramel, and pecans. Doesnt that sound simply delicious? Some turtle cookie recipes will also be drizzled with melted caramel on top. These chewy turtle cookies are simply delicious.
Dont faint but I am not a big fan of chocolate chip cookies. I do however love a good turtle cookie with caramel and pecans tossed in, like these.
Cookie Fact #: Too Much Dissolved Sugar = Uniform Texture And Less Cracking
Going back to my initial problem of wanting the flavor of browned butter but disliking the way it prevented sugar from properly dissolving, I asked myself, what if I were to flip the script for these cookies: instead of creaming sugar and butter and adding eggs, why not beat together the eggs and sugar then add the butter?
I tried it, beating brown sugar, granulated sugar, and vanilla with whole eggs in a stand mixer until the mixture became pale, aerated, and ribbony, with a nearly completely smooth texture.* To this, I added my browned butter, which instantly cooked the eggs and curdled them, turning the mixture into an oddly sweet and vanilla-y scrambled egg custard. Lesson learned: let that browned butter cool before adding it.
*A sugar and water solution becomes fully saturated at room temperatures at a ratio of about 2 parts sugar by mass to 1 part water . My working recipe contained about 4 ounces of egg and 10 ounces of sugar, so perfect smoothness was an impossible goal.
My next attempt with cooled brown butter fared better, but the finished cookies ended up with an oddly uniform texture and a relatively smooth top rather than the cragginess I’d been getting earlier.
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
Turns out that you actually want a balance between dissolved sugar and undissolved sugar to keep things texturally interesting.
The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Ever
This is the best chocolate chip cookies recipe ever! No funny ingredients, no chilling time, etc. Just a simple, straightforward, amazingly delicious, doughy yet still fully cooked, chocolate chip cookie that turns out perfectly every single time!
Everyone needs a classic chocolate chip cookie recipe in their repertoire, and this is mine. It is seriously the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Ever! I have been making these for many, many years and everyone who tries them agrees theyre out-of-this-world delicious!
Plus, theres no funny ingredients, no chilling, etc. Just a simple, straightforward, amazingly delicious, doughy yet still fully cooked, chocolate chip cookie that turns out perfectly every single time!
These are everything a chocolate chip cookie should be. Crispy and chewy. Doughy yet fully baked. Perfectly buttery and sweet.
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Make The Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
The first step in making these easy chocolate chip cookies to to combine the dry ingredients in a medium size bowl.
When doing this, make sure to Measure the flour correctly. Be sure to use a measuring cup made for dry ingredients . Then, measure flour by scooping it into a measuring cup and leveling it with a knife.
Next, cream together butter and sugars, make sure to soften the butter early by taking it out of the fridge at least two hours before baking so it’s ready to go when you need it. You can also warm it in the microwave for about 7 seconds, but be very careful not to melt it.
Once butter/sugar mixture is beaten well, add the eggs & vanilla and beat to combine.
Add dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Then add the chocolate chips and beat until they are evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Use LOTS of chocolate chips. You want at least two gooey chocolate chips in every bite.
The chocolate chip cookie dough should be easy to roll and not sticky. It should not be dry or crumbly. See photo below for the optimal texture.
How To Make Perfectly Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
I like to use a lot of chocolate chips a full 12 ounce bag in each batch. Too much chocolate is not a thing. You can also use a mix of chocolate chips and chunks.
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How To Make Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
To make truly soft and chewy chocolate chip cookies, you first need to cream together the butter, sugars, egg, and vanilla. Beat the mixture for a good 4 minutes dont skip this step!
Add in the dry ingredients and mix until just combined, then fold in the chocolate chips.
Note that you add the pudding mix like a dry ingredient. You do NOT actually make the pudding. Scoop the cookie dough into balls using a large cookie scoop, then place on a large tray and cover with plastic wrap.
I baked my chewy chocolate chip cookies for 11 minutes, but if you choose to make smaller cookies, youll need to bake for less time. How much less? I dont know.
Tip: The secret to making the best chewy chocolate chip cookies is keeping them a touch underbaked. I think thats the secret to most good cookies!
How To Bake Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
Sifting Dry Ingredients Sift dry ingredients like flour, baking powder, and baking soda to combine and aerate them helps make for fluffier cookies. To sift, simply combine your dry ingredients and pour into in a fine-mesh strainer. Tap or shake the strainer until everythings in your bowl. Even if sifting is not called for, you can whisk the dry ingredients for 30 seconds to fully combine.
Creaming Butter and Sugar Unlike stirring or mixing, creaming isnt about combining ingredients, its about aerating them. Creaming creates air pockets that expand in the oven, making the dough tender. When you add sugar, that process is more effective. Sugar crystals are formed and the air is efficiently added to the butter and sugar mixture. Butter beats up fluffiest at room temperature, or when slightly softened.
Eggs Eggs should be added at room temperature. They add moisture to the air pockets and flavor to the dough. To quickly warm eggs, place them in a bowl of warm water for a few minutes. After the eggs have been added you should also add the vanilla extract or sometimes milk if the recipe calls for it.
If you are not scared of a bit more sugar, try adding some powder sugar right out of the oven. This works especially well if the cookies are hot and if you used semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate morsels. It is also great with cocoa, but in that case, I would use milk chocolate morsels.
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Cookie Fact #: Browned Butter = Less Moisture And Less Dissolved Sugar = Less Caramel Flavor
I asked myself: if browning milk proteins provide extra flavor to cookies, how could I boost that flavor even more?
My friend Charles Kelsey, the man behind the fantastic Brookline, MA sandwich shop Cutty’s, developed a simple chocolate chip cookie recipe for Cook’s Illustrated magazine back in 2009. In his recipe, he made the ingenious discovery that browning the butter before adding it to the mixture would give the cookies a much more pronounced nuttiness.
But this created some other problems. Since the butter can’t get hot enough to brown milk proteins until all of its water content has evaporated, brown butter adds no moisture to dough. This produces a couple of interesting results. Without water, sugar that is mixed into browned butter cannot dissolve , which makes it subsequently more difficult for them to melt into each other as the cookie bakes. The cookies ended up missing out on some of that caramelized toffee flavor I was after.
With less water, you also end up with less gluten development, thus a cookie made with browned butter is softer and more tender than one made with creamed or plain melted butter. Soft and chewy is good, but I wanted a slightly better balance.
So how do I get the flavor benefits of browned butter while still allowing for sugar to dissolve and caramelize properly? The answer turned out to be in the eggs.
Cookie Fact #: Butter Gives The Most Flavor
Butter is essential for flavor. Substituting butter with a less flavorful fat like shortening or margarine yielded sub-par cookies. Butter is about 80 to 83% butterfat, 15% water, and 3 to 5% milk protein. These proteins brown as the cookie bakes, adding nuttiness and butterscotch notes to the final flavor of cookies.
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Why Do Chocolate Chip Cookies Go Flat
This is usually due to having the wrong balance of ingredients causing them to spread out too much. Also, check your leavening and make sure your baking soda is not expired and still active. To test baking soda, place 1 tsp baking soda into a cup and add a splash of vinegar it should fizz and if it doesnt, replace your baking soda.
What Makes This The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
- Texture: The cookies are soft in the middle and chewy around the edges.
- Flavor: They have a sweet, buttery, toffy-like cookie flavor, loaded with chocolate chips.
- Quick & Easy to make: No bringing the ingredients to room temperature. No chilling the dough. The recipe can easily be whisked together, instead of using a mixer. And, its a ONE BOWL recipe.
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What Happens When Chocolate Chip Cookies Bake
Most traditional chocolate chip cookie recipes start with the same basic ingredients and technique: butter and a mix of granulated and brown sugar are creamed together with a touch of vanilla until fluffy, eggs are beaten in one at a time, followed by flour, salt, and some sort of chemical leavening agent . The mixture is combined just until it comes together, then spooned onto a baking sheet and baked.
When you bake a cookie, here’s what’s going on, step-by-step:
It’s a simple technique that hides more complicated processes underneath. So how do you decipher what’s going on? My first course of action was to test out these basic ingredients one at a time in order to determine how they affect the final outcome.
How To Freeze Cookie Dough:
This cookie dough is freezer friendly and we love freezing half for another day.
To freeze cookie dough: place cookie dough balls onto a baking sheet or cutting board, cover and freeze for an hour or until solid. Once they are frozen, you can transfer them to a large ziploc bag and freeze up to 3 months.
To bake frozen cookie dough: transfer to a Silpat or parchment-lined baking sheet and thaw the frozen cookies in the refrigerator for 3 hours over overnight before baking per the recipe instructions.
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How To Make Chocolate Chip Cookies
Once youve gathered all of your ingredients, its time to prepare these easy chocolate chip cookies. Heres a simple breakdown on how to make the cookie dough and bake the cookies.
Make Ahead And Freezing Instructions:
To Make Ahead: The cookie dough can be made 1-3 days ahead, stored in the refrigerator. Baked cookies are best enjoyed the same day, or frozen if enjoying another day.
To Freeze: Scoop cookie dough on a baking sheet and freeze for 30 minutes. Transfer cookie dough to freezer safe container or bag. Thaw before baking dough. Baked cookies can be frozen after cooling completely. Freeze in an air-tight freezer safe container or bag for up to 3 months.
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Recipe
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What Makes These The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
If youre in search of thick, chubby, generously sized cccs that are slightly crisp and chewy around the edges, with pillowy soft middles, a rich, buttery brown sugar flavor, and plenty of gooey chocolate chips in every bite, then look no further.
- Made with basic pantry staples, nothing wierd or exotic.
- Easy to make, in just one bowl.
- Quick to make, with no chilling required.
- Not only soft when theyre fresh from the oven. They keep that ooey-gooey, soft & chewy texture for days!
Can You Freeze The Cookie Dough Or Baked Cookies
Yes! I suggest scooping the cookie dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and place the baking sheet in the freezer. Once the cookie dough is frozen, you can store it in a freezer bag or container in the freezer for up to 3 months. To bake the cookie dough from frozen, add an additional 1 to 2 minutes of baking time.
Baked cookies that have cooled completely will freeze well for up to 3 months too. Simply place the cookies on the counter and thaw to room temperature before serving.
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How To Make Chewy And Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies
Cookie Fact #: Creamed Butter = Lighter And Firmer Melted Butter = Denser And Chewier
Serious Eats / J. Kenji López-Alt
How butter is incorporated can also affect texture. In the early creaming stages of making a cookie, cool butter is beaten until it’s light and fluffy. During the process, some air is incorporated and some of the sugar dissolves in the butter’s water phase. This air in turn helps leaven the cookies as they bake, giving them some lift. Melting butter before combining it with sugar and eggs leads to squatter, denser cookies.
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How To Store And Freeze Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
- Store the cookies in a tightly covered container or zip-close bag at room temperature. For best texture and flavor, eat the cookies within 1 week or freeze them for up to 3 months. Thaw frozen baked cookies at room temperature.
- To warm frozen baked cookies, place them on a baking sheet and bake at 300 F for about 5 to 10 minutes. Or microwave the cookies for about 20 to 30 seconds, or until warm.
- To freeze unbaked cookies, scoop them onto a baking sheet and freeze. When the cookie dough mounds are frozen solid, transfer them to zip-close freezer bags or containers. Freeze the cookie dough for up to 3 months.
- To cook frozen unbaked cookies, place them on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Preheat oven to 350 F and bake for 10 to 15 minutes.
What Make These Cookies So Soft And Chewy
Sugar: Brown sugar makes the cookies moist and soft and increases chewiness. White sugar makes cookies crispier. Therefore I like using more brown sugar than white sugar in my recipe, but I do like using a combination of them. It is all about the right white-brown sugar balance.
Butter: melted butter rather than room temperature increases chewiness.
Eggs: instead of using just whole eggs, we add an egg yolk. I know I know, Its annoying. But trust me its necessary. The egg yolk increases chewiness as well!
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