As you likely know by now, I spent a lot of time looking at food websites in my spare time, whether it’s through Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or Twitter each of these channels brings me new ideas every time. Well, recently, I came across the NYTimes Cooking best chocolate chip recipe. I was intrigued because generally NYTimes Cooking is a great source for quality recipes, and I wanted to try this one.

I was immediately in love with the recipe, after reviewing the ingredients and method. I had to made a few small tweaks based on ingredients I had at home though, and in the end, accidentally didn’t include the granulated sugar #bakingfail (I was feeling a bit under the weather and just plain old forgot). Their original recipe is linked above, but I’ve listed the adjustments/error I made below.

Quickly though, I want to highlight why I love this cookie: 1) It’s not too sweet, just the right sweet, because I forgot one of the sugars; 2) it’s a nice texture, not chewy (although I do like chewy) it’s a bit more crumbly – perfect for a sandwich; 3) there is a high chocolate to cookie ratio so you get chocolate in every bite; and 4) I liked the method they used, simply following the creaming method (The Pastry Chef online defines it well) to letting the dough rest overnight.

Here is my version of the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:
2 cups minus 2 tablespoons (8 1/2 ounces) cake flour** (see note, I used all-purpose flour)
1 ⅔ cups (8 1/2 ounces) bread flour**(I used all-purpose flour)
1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda
1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons coarse salt
2 ½ sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
1 ¼ cups (10 ounces) light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (8 ounces)granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 ¼ pounds bittersweet chocolate (I used 54% chocolate chips, or use your favourite)
Sea salt (for garnishing on top, flake salt is ideal)

METHOD:

1. Sift your dry ingredients, the first five ingredients and set aside.
   NOTE: I didn’t have cake flour when I made this, I just had bread flour and all-purpose flour. In many instances you can substitute all-purpose flour for cake flour, but because we are using bread flour here too, it would have been too much gluten (cake flour is lower in gluten than the others, whereas bread flour is higher – which is why it’s good for making bread). I chose to replace both flours with all-purpose flour because the gluten percentage works out to be the same.
2. Cream the butter and sugars together until light, then add your eggs one at time while continuing to mix. Mix well after each addition, which you always want to do when adding liquids into a fat (i.e. egg into butter). Add your vanilla. And then make sure you are mixing on a low-speed when you add your dry ingredients or you end up with a cloud of flour all over your kitchen (I’ve done it, so double-check your speed each time). Mix until just combined and then add the chocolate chips. If you’re using a stand mixer you can transfer your dough to a smaller bowl, cover it and chill overnight (or up to 3 days, max, if you want to make it over a few days).
3. I took the dough out the next day and let it soften at room temperature before scooping, so I didn’t break my arm. The dough get’s quite stiff. Once you are ready to scoop your dough, first preheat your oven to 350F. Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper and set to the side.
4. Scoop even sized portions of dough, using a cookie scoop or two spoons. I used a mini-scoop and weighed out my dough into g portions. After tasting the dough, I knew it wouldn’t be too sweet and perfect for making mini-sandwiches filled with buttercream!!
5. Once you have scooped all of your dough, roll them into balls. Then place the dough on your cookie sheet with space between to allow for spreading. Sprinkle with sea salt and bake until golden brown, for me it was closer to 15 minutes because they are small, but if you make larger size then they could take up to 18 to 20 minutes. The original recipe yields 18 5-inch size cookies, I ended up making close to 4 dozen sandwiches. Once baked to satisfaction, transfer cookies to a cooling rack and allow to completely cool before filling. Or you can enjoy as they are!

If you want to fill these with buttercream, I used Cupcake Jemma’s recipe, which I love. But I only used half of her recipe and still had leftover. Here is her video for how to make, and her recipe is in the video comments.

Once the cookies were completely cooled, I lined them up in pairs, and piped a large teaspoon of buttercream onto one cookie and topped with the second. I made about 3.5 dozen sandwiches in total, there were a few quality control samples that were sacrificed during the testing of this recipe, so I believe you could easily yield a few more…. Or just have a glass of milk on standby as you fill your cookies and sample away.

Here is a look at the photos I snapped for this one….   Next time I’m going to add the granulated sugar, and then my cookies won’t turn out as rounded as they did here, they will spread more and appear more like the images in the NYTimes Cooking recipe link (above).