Hi Mary! Nice to see you here on Cooking...

Here's my recipe for CC cookies. It's pretty standard. The only change I make from the Nestle's Toll House recipe is in the ratio of white to brown sugar.

2 Sticks Butter
1 Cup White Sugar
1/2 Cup Light Brown Sugar
1 Teaspoon Pure Vanilla Extract
2 Eggs, lightly beaten
2-1/4 Cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour (I also use KA flour)
1 Teaspoon Baking Soda
Chocolate Chips - I use about 2 cups
Walnuts, chopped (if desired...I don't use them)

Cream the butter/sugar together until very light & fluffy. Add vanilla to the lightly beaten eggs, stir, & add mixture to the butter/sugar. Blend well. Add flour & baking soda & stir just to blend the flour. Add the chocolate chips & nuts (if using) & finish mixing.

I don't use a mixer for any cookie dough. IMO, it does change the texture. Again, IMO, a mixer makes a cookie that is reminescent of a commercial bakery cookie. I feel the mixer beats too much air into the dough. That said, many many people use mixers for cookie dough.

I never refrigerate my chocolate & I would guess that you should toss your old chips & start fresh. An apartment oven is quite likely not to be calibrated correctly. Purchase an oven thermometer (available even at the grocery store in my area). They are inexpensive. Then, you can make adjustments to your temp settings to compensate for the oven. Also, how old was your flour? It's possible the flour had absorbed a lot of moisture & you needed to add a bit of water to your dough for proper consistency. The next possible thing I can think of is the temperature of your butter. It should be room temperature...soft but not smooshy (is that a word?) soft. If the butter was cold, your cookies would not have spread well. It's unlikely your measuring cups are off...but the way you measure may be. Loosen your flour with a spoon, dip your measuring cup into the flour without shaking the measuring cup & then scrape off the top with a knife. If you bang the measuring cup against the side of your canister to level it will pack the flour & you'll end up with too much.

I'm sure others will come up with other suggestions for your cookies. Sorry you had to trash a batch but CCCs are worth repeating to get it right! Yummmm Hey, how's the househunting???

/tricia

I might add that you should always use large eggs for baking.

I had a problem with the oven in an apartment once. Found out it was because I had a tea kettle sitting on the burner where the oven vent was. I had been use to wall ovens so never gave it a thought...

Nancy

Not a stupid question at all. You're just on the beginning of your learning curve. And yes, it sounds like you added too much flour - or perhaps your eggs were small and you lost some hydration by using smaller eggs. -Grainlady

1. Use a mixer (hand or stand) to cream the fat and sugar together, then add the other liquid ingredients. It can also be done with a spoon, but that's a LOT of work. The sugar, fats and liquids are mixed together first, until well combined.

Make sure the butter is at room temperature, as well as the eggs. You can check the butter by taking the temperature with an instant read thermometer (64-65F). Perfectly softened butter should give gently to pressure (you should be able to leave a fingerprint and slight indention on the stick) but shouldn't be soft in appearance. You shouldn't be able to press your finger into the stick of butter. Butter that is too soft or is partially melted results in dough that is too soft, causing cookies to spread too much.

2. The dry ingredients are mixed together in a separate bowl then added to the first mixture. This should be done by hand. When it comes to ANYTHING where you don't want a lot of gluten development (quick breads, cookies, pastry, cakes, etc.) you should add the dry ingredients by hand. I use a Danish Dough Whisk for anything I need to hand mix. It's the perfect tool for hand mixing. You can add a portion of the dry ingredients with the mixer (keep it on low for mixing), but finish the last by hand, if you lack the strength to do it all by hand. Add any chunky stuff (raisins, chocolate chips, nuts, etc.) towards the end of mixing.

Mix the dry ingredients into the liquid mixture ONLY until it's mixed together, and NO MORE. If you use a mixer, you may tend to over-mix the dough/batter and develop the gluten in the flour, which will contribute to the cookies being tough.

When I judge cookies at the fair I can tell those that used a mixer for blending the wet and dry ingredients, and those who didn't - there's that much difference in my books..... I think this is one of the BIG challenges for people who own stand mixers. They tend to over-mix batter and dough. But I digress on one of my pet peeves...

3. KA all-purpose flour has more gluten than National Brands (Gold Medal and Pillsbury) of all-purpose flour. Gluten absorbs a lot of hydration; therefore, I'd use 2-3 T. less flour to begin with when using KA all-purpose flour, and add some if the dough seems too slack/wet. It's much easier to adjust hydration by adding a bit of flour in the mixing stage. You need to remember, as the dough sits, the gluten and any dry ingredients, like oatmeal or bran, will continue to absorb hydration. It's best to allow the dough to sit for 20-30 minutes (I like to refrigerate it) before you begin to bake the cookies. This gives the ingredients time to hydrate, chilling will help the fat to solidify, and the rest will help the gluten strands to relax.

Flour in the winter is also pretty dry, and reverse that in the summer when things are more humid. Flour in recipes is always a good guess due to differences in the amount of gluten from brand to brand and bag to bag, and the amount of moisture the flour has absorbed from the air. That's why you must go by "feel" of many batters and doughs - to compensate for the variables of the flour which affect hydration.

4. Can your measuring be off? Funny you should ask... Anyone who measures flour in a cup is "off", but most baking is a ratio of ingredients and pretty forgiving.

Only weight measures are accurate (but no matter how accurately flour is measured, you still have to take into consideration the other aspects, such as gluten and moisture it absorbs from the air).

To properly measure flour, stir the flour to aerate it. Spoon the flour into the cup, and when it's heaped up, use a straight edge to scrape the excess flour off the cup. DO NOT tap the cup to settle the flour. DO NOT scoop the cup into the flour canister/bag and drag it up the side of the container. You can be adding as much as 2-5 T. flour by using these methods. As a test, you can fill your cup and measure it on a scale and see how much difference there is between cup measures using different filling techniques.

5. The chocolate chips don't melt. If you touch the hot chocolate chips when they first come out of the oven they will spread, but they don't melt.

That was interesting info that i didnt know about KA flour. Thanks Grainlady!

I enjoy reading your answers Grainlady, they are always so informative and easy to understand :

Well the best Chocolate Chip Cookies in our world are now Sol's Brown Sugar CC Cookies.

1 cup butter, softened
2 cup brown sugar
1 T vanilla (I'm doing this from memory, I add 1T but it could be 2 t.)LOL
2 eggs
1 t baking soda
1 t salt (I use a few pinches of flake Kosher if using salted butter.)
2 1/2 c flour

Beat softened butter, add in brown sugar, give it a few minutes of beating, add in vanilla, a few more minutes, add in eggs..and let go til fluffy.
Pour in dry ingredients. Blend just until incorporated. Add in atleast 2 cups of chocolate chips..toss in some nuts if you like..
Bake at 325 for about 12 minutes. (We like ours soft and underdone a bit.)

This directions are what I do. Not Sol's original typed ones. I use this cookie as a base for any "chip" cookie and they are LOVED here..

oh and my question..what type of cookie "sheet" were you using?

Thanks Terri, but where are the chocolate chips?

Mary, aside from what's been said, you can't really hurt a cookie recipe by beating the sugar and fats together too long. But once you add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture, that's when you need to use a light hand mixing it all together to avoid incorporating too much air into the cookie batter.

Here's the recipe in its entirety.

Brown Sugar Chocolate Chip Cookies

2½ cups AP flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
2 cups light brown sugar, packed
2 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips, or coarsely chopped semisweet chocolate
½ cup chopped walnuts, optional

Whisk together the flour, baking soda and salt. In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar until light. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla. On low speed, add the flour mixture, and mix until barely blended. Add chocolate chips and nuts. Drop by tablespoons onto sheet pan and bake in a 350°F oven, for 12-15 minutes.

Sol

This came from about.com's cooking light recipe section. I just tried these a couple of days ago and they are really GREAT. They're not really low in sugar, but they're low in fat and low cholesterol, for those watching those items in their diet but still craving a chocolate chip cookie:

Light Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate chip cookies will never be declared a health food, but you can make them less unhealthy by tweaking the ingredients a little. Here's a recipe for a lighter chocolate chip cookie that still manages to satisfy a sweet tooth, but perhaps with a little less guilt.
INGREDIENTS:
· 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour
· 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
· 1/4 tsp baking soda
· 1/4 tsp salt
· 4 tbsp butter, melted (I used margarine)
· 2 egg whites (I used 1/4 c. egg beaters)
· 1 tsp vanilla extract
· 3/4 cup firmly-packed light brown sugar
· 1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
PREPARATION:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two cookies sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
In a medium bowl, whisk flour, baking soda and salt. In a large bowl, whisk together the egg whites, butter, and vanilla; stir in the brown sugar until smooth.
Gradually add in the flour mixture and mix well. Stir in chocolate chips.
Drop dough by the tablespoon onto cookie sheets about 2 inches apart. Bake one cookie sheet at a time for 10-12 minutes.
Yields 24 cookies.
Per Cookie : Calories 92, Calories from Fat 30, Total Fat 3.4g, (sat 2.6g), Cholesterol 6mg, Sodium 45mg, Carbohydrate 14.5g, Fiber 0.7g, Protein 1.2g

Sol, they are in the directions..LOL good call...

That's very interesting about KA flour. I'm a real novice in the baking department. Unfortunately for others in our family I'm a certified carbohoylic and eat too much of what I bake, so having it in the house isn't a steady thing. That said, after reading here about KA and their great flours, I switched from my favorite Gold Medal. I did notice a texture difference, but thought it was all in my head, or at least I messed up on measuring some ingredient.

Now I understand why the KA flour can make a difference. I'll try and remember to reduce the amount by just a bit the next time I bake.

It's amazing what I learn just reading these posts.

Oh Wow - thanks for all the really informative responses! Exactly what I needed. Taking the eggs and butter out of the fridge and going to try again later in the afternoon.

Triciae - I had thought about putting out a "where is Triciae" post!
The house hunting is going nowhere although i spend an INORDINATE amount of time checking and looking for that needle in the haystack. There's very little out there of what I'm looking for and then I can't afford it, although I can honestly say I haven't seen that much I'd buy even if I had an extra 100 thou. If I could live on a slab I'd probably be in a house by now. So frustrating to run into these local weirdnesses.
How have you been? Still just keeping an eye out? Is that one place on the hill still for sale?

Hi Mary, thanks for thinking about me. My posts have been a bit limited the past couple months. I've not been feeling well but the doctors have me on my way to better days.

Have you considered cork flooring? We had it installed in our kitchen & sun room because of my back & it's been wonderful. I don't know if it would be enough to compensate for the slab but you might want to check it out. Here's a link to the stuff we used...it's the Wicanders 1000 line.

Have a great weekend making CCC cookies! I can almost smell them...yum

/tricia

Ladies, a quick thanks, carefully followed the tips and techniques here and just had some cookies and milk! Much better than the ones before!

Triciae - hope you do feel better soon! Sucks to be sick.

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