How to make the best homemade chocolate cookies in the world?
The cookie, the ultimate US emblem
In the game of cookies, Americans are kings. Knowing perfectly the concept of "chewy" - understand soft to the heart - American pastry chefs compete in creativity to come up with THE recipe for unmissable cookies. Crunchy edges, large pieces of chocolate, mixture of sugars, everything is a question of dosage and above all of cooking.
The right ingredients for perfect chocolate cookies
To make delicious cookies, you don't need an ingredient that can't be found. Butter – a lot – sugar, eggs, flour, and dark or milk chocolate (depending on taste) is enough to enjoy. After all is a matter of dosage and technique.
Long live mixed sugars
Concerning sugar, if you can work only with white sugar, it is better to opt for a mixture of refined and whole sugars. Brown sugar, brown sugar, muscovado, rapadura, all these ingredients will give more intensity and flavor to homemade cookies. Indeed, when white sugar only brings a sweet taste to our sweets, whole sugars add a full-bodied and caramelized flavor to the whole. Don't worry, all these products are easily found in supermarkets or organic grocery stores.
Beurre noisette, the key to perfect chocolate cookies
Butter is also an essential ingredient in cookies. It is thanks to the latter that the cookies – after cooling – will be extremely tender. So when it comes to butter, there is only one watchword: generosity. Let it be said, when you make cookies, you do not lighten the recipe, otherwise you will end up with a result that is too dry.
While melted butter remains a classic in this recipe, the best technique is to cook the butter until you get hazelnut butter. Thus, this product will give a slight "nutty" note to the whole. On the other hand, be careful, when you prepare hazelnut butter, you lose volume. This means that 200g of melted butter only gives -approximately- 150/160g of brown butter. It will therefore be necessary to supplement its hazelnut butter with normal butter to achieve the right quantity of finished product. You can also melt a lot more butter than the amount indicated in the recipe to have the right final amount. Both techniques are equal, the most important thing is to have the right weight in our dough.
Chocolate again and again (okay, okay)
On the chocolate side, two teams compete. There are those who swear by chocolate chips, and those who prefer chopped chocolate. Here, we chose our camp, the second, for two reasons. Already chocolate in bars costs less than chocolate chips of equal weight - a not insignificant fact -, but also chocolate chopped by hand makes it possible to obtain good big shards when tasted, which is all the same - any proportion guarded – perfection in the case of cookies.
Indeed, we must not forget that there are only a few ingredients in the recipe for homemade chocolate cookies, so we must choose them well and work with them.
For the quantity, the ideal is to have a good ratio between dough and chocolate chips (the famous Anglo-Saxon chunks) but if you have a heavy hand on chocolate, you will never be blamed. Never !
Wheat flour or oilseed powder?
For perfect cookies, which is better to incorporate? Of flour ? Almond or oilseed powder? A mixture of the two? In fact, it all depends on the desired result.
Almond, hazelnut, or pistachio powder will provide softness and extra flavor, while flour will provide the ideal texture.
If in any other pastry recipe, you are warmly invited to replace part of the flour with oilseed powder, for cookies, we only put on flour which will allow you to obtain edges crunchy and a soft interior. We tested both versions, and after tasting, the texture of homemade flour cookies is definitely the best.
Fleur de sel, the final touch
Obviously it's all a matter of taste, but adding fleur de sel to the dough and cookies before baking is the best idea . To date, we have never met a gourmet who is disappointed by the salty touch of our cookies. On good terms.
Techniques to adopt for perfect cookies
The ice cream scoop, the ideal utensil
Once our dough is ready and has rested in the fridge, we imitate the Americans and one uses an ice cream scoop to mold his balls of dough. Thus all our cookies will be the same size, and allow to keep the same cooking in each batch.
Cooking, the crucial step
Last step and yet the most important, it is by perfectly measuring the cooking that you can obtain these half-cooked delicacies, a little crunchy, but still melting heart. Cooking also depends on the size of the balls of dough, but in general, it is between 10 and 13 minutes at 180°C/th.6. In all honesty, if you find a recipe with 20 minutes of baking, chances are your cookies are overbaked (that can be a choice too!)
When in doubt, always underbake your cookies. There's always time to put them back in the oven for an extra 1-2 minutes than feeling sorry for overcooked cookies.
Now that you have all the cards in hand, all you need is this recipe.
The recipe for the best chocolate cookies in the world
Preparation: 15 minutes Cooking: 13 minutes Rest: 2 hours
For 20 cookies
Ingredients
210 g semi-salted butter + 30 to 50 g to complete 150 g brown sugar 30 g muscovado 20 g white sugar 1 egg + 1 yolk 210 g flour 3/4 tsp. baking soda 1 tbsp. 1/2 tsp fleur de sel300 g chopped dark chocolate
Melt the butter until you get brown butter. Weigh it and fill with unmelted butter until you reach 210 g again. Let the butter cool completely (this is important not to melt the chocolate). Mix the sugars and the eggs. Add the hazelnut butter, flour, baking soda and fleur de sel. Chop the chocolate into large slivers, add them to the dough. Refrigerate and let the dough firm for 2 hours. Preheat the oven to 180°C/th.6. Line a baking sheet with baking paper. Form balls of dough with an ice cream scoop and place these balls on the plate, spacing them out. Sprinkle with fleur de sel. Bake for 10 to 13 minutes depending on the size of the dough balls. Enjoy warm or cold.
For even more inspiration, here are 10 variations of chocolate cookies to die for.
