my quest
Well, I have 2 quests right now. One is to find the best chocolate chip cookie recipe ever. The second is to find the best brownie recipe ever. My stipulation for brownies is that I want them to taste like the boxed kind but without all the ingredients I can’t pronounce. I want fudgy, dense – not cake-like, but want them to taste like the box mix. That may be impossible.
The thorn in my side with chocolate chip cookies is that they spread flat. I have a couple of recipes to try, one from Baking Illustrated. I think part of the problem is that I use butter and not shortening. I know there has got to be a recipe that works with butter. I use shortening in pastry crust and biscuits, that’s it. I have read a bit that the temperature of the butter can impact the spreading so I will be working on that – the Baking Illustrated recipe also uses an extra egg yolk and all brown sugar.
My preference is Ghirardelli semi-sweet chips and the store was OUT of them today. I was ticked! I had to settle for Hershey’s. Bah. I did pick up a Ghirardelli bittersweet bar that I might chop up and add to the next experiment. Both Costco and Sam’s had only Nestle’ for semi-sweet. Sam’s had Ghirardelli bittersweet chips but I really prefer semi-sweet.
At least my family puts up with my experiments, even when my cookies are flat. I really want a cookie. Now.
To quote Mr Lunt… “you’re making me hungry”.
Comment by Norm in FM — September 2, 2009 @ 3:52 pm
Although it sounds counter-intuitive, the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve made use melted butter…and they don’t spread. Here’s the link:
http://livefireonline.com/2007/10/18/jaays-best-ever-chocolate-chip-cookies/
Also, King Arthur Flour has a great baking blog, and they have a whole-grain brownie recipe that looks amazing:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/tasting-is-believing-whole-grain-brownies-recipe?go=RT90915J&utm_source=RT90915&utm_medium=email&utm_content=&spMailingID=2290306&spUserID=MTEwMDMyMDE5MzIS1&spJobID=157844863&spReportId=MTU3ODQ0ODYzS0
Best of luck!
Comment by Amy — September 15, 2009 @ 9:00 pm
Thank you for the recipes, Amy! That cookie recipe is similar to the one I tried recently – it also uses melted butter. It came out fairly well – but not as thick and chunky as I’d like (I want them to look like the ones in the pictures!). I will try those next time. The brownies look good, too; I will have to try those.
Comment by morethanfine — September 16, 2009 @ 12:50 pm
Amy, thanks for the mention!
If you want the cookies a bit thicker, try using bread flour, or a mix of bread and all-purpose flour, and they’ll stay thicker.
Comment by Curt — September 19, 2009 @ 10:25 am