A Baking Question.

[fings]

I decided to try making one of my holiday favorites tonight: Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies.

And they came out good, but not as supercalorificexpealidoecious as my Uncle George's.

I have noticed before in my chocolate chip cookies, too often the chips come out soft (after the cookies have cooled), unlike the hard little bits of chocolate they were going in. I want them to remain hard/crunchy, not become tender/flakey. These cookies I baked 15 minutes at 350F.

What should I try next time, to get them to come out the way I like? Bake slower at lower temperature? Faster at higher? Freeze the semi-sweet morsels ahead of time? Try a different brand of chocolate (these are Nestle Toll House)?

(I'll be bringing most of these in to work, but not to worry yolen, I'll save a few in the refrigerator for you.)

Comments

[retch.livejournal.com]

The problem with the chips is that Hershey's and Nestle's both do things to their chips to keep them soft and gooey because that's what consumer panels have been shown to want.

ewwww, I didn't notice he was using Nestle Toll House chips!

Yes, if you are going through the effort of baking your own, getting decent chocolate is a must.

I use Scharffenberger Bittersweet (70% cacoa, 10 oz bar) and Ghirardelli White (4oz bar) in what is otherwise basically the Toll House recipe (but with much better ingredients like european style butter and high quality vanilla) with different proportions (less baking soda, more vanilla extract, a bit more chocolate). Freeze the bar to make it shatterable, pound into a mixture of small chunks and chocolate dust with a heavy object (back side of a cleaver works well, as does a hammer from the toolbox),blend into the dough. Tastes delicious and leaves these awesome looking brown and white streaks all over the bottom of the cookies when they are done baking.

[lousy-timing.livejournal.com]

You sound like me with how you bake. Twice the vanilla (which I get from Penzeys), best butter I can find, etc. You work harder on your chocolate that I do, though. I do use Ghirardelli chips, though.

I think it was Cook's Illustrated that reviewed Scharffenberger and didn't find it worth the price differential, so I haven't tried it yet. I'll have to find that article. If you like it, though, I'll give it a try since you have obvious cooking sense from everything else you've said. ;)

[retch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I just splash the vanilla in in large quantities because I love the taste... :) It is very much a by eye sort of thing ('maybe just one more splash over there...')

All the ~10oz bars of chocolate seem to cost fairly close at Whole Foods, Scharffenberger was actually cheaper than the other choice, on the occasions where this is another choice, heh. :)

I like starting with the bars, I used to use chips, but I found that the irregular chunks from shattering the bars are nice and I can't believe how pretty the brown and white streaks and swirls on the base of the cookies look.

Good butter is key too, the difference in the taste, and the appearance of the tops of the cookie is dramatic just between normal and european style butter. I always use European now.

:)

mmm cookies. I have all the ingredients in the house... Must be good, must be good. lol.

[lousy-timing.livejournal.com]

I suppose it would be very bad of me to say that I was just at Wegmans today to buy things for holiday cookies, then?

Oops- too late! >;P

[retch.livejournal.com]

:)

[lousy-timing.livejournal.com]

Ah- you're a West Coast guy. Well, having not been to the homeland recently, I can't say what compares to Wegmans. Nothing? Larry's is somewhat like it, but I don't know if they are where you are, and Wegman's is even better if you love to cook.

It's sort of like if Whole Foods had started in NY a hundred years ago and still wanted to be your family grocer. Most of the people who shop there a price-conscious liberals who will blow the budget for a good epicurean delight. They have awesome staples and then all these little markets that make a cook or baker do the SQUEE dance for hours... Of course, if you just wanted to look good and be pretentious, they could cater for you, too.

I run those people down "by accident" with my cart on a routine basis.