I always use butter....if theya re too "squishy" bake them longer.
The difference between butter and margerine? Butter tastes better.
Linda C

If you use Crisco, the cookie won't be as flat and spread out. It will sit up higher and be a tad bit firmer than a butter cookie. I prefer them with Crisco, or with half Crisco and half butter.
Sherry

My understanding of ingredients is that all butter will give you a flatter, crisper cookie. Shortening or margarine will give you a lighter, puffier cookie. Melting the butter will make it chewier, as will underbaking the cookie just a bit. Brown sugar will make a chewier cookie, white sugar a crisper cookie. Egg makes a cakier cookie, and egg yolk makes a cakier cookie while egg white makes it drier.

And that's my total understanding of cookie ingredients, LOL.

My girls like them a bit puffy and still chewy, so I use dark brown sugar and half margarine, half butter. I don't much care for chocolate chip cookies, so I do it the way they like 'em, but it took several experiments to get it right.

They also like the texture better if I chill the dough before baking, I don't know why but it does make a difference.

Annie

I have always made my Toll House cookies with Crisco. My family likes that they have a little chunkier texture then when made with butter or margarine.

I like butter best...I also like them squishy. Some members of my family are fanatically opposed to transfats and they are the ones who do the work when it comes to cookies. (My duties are fortunately limited to "I left some butter out in case you want to make cookies...")

The bag lists butter or margarine as ingredients--I never thought to use shortening.

I like Annie's summary. Couldn't have put it better. I'm not a crisp cookie person. I use half butter for the flavor and half margarine or Crisco for the texture.

It might be helpful to understand why. First of all, butter is not pure fat -- it actually contains some water (and milk solids). So you are actually using less fat and more water than you think.

Secondly, the melting point of the fat you choose affects your results. That's why even after adjusting for the difference in fat and water, you'll still get different results with different fats, and even by tweaking the temperature of the dough. When the fat is already melted at the dough temperature (or you use oil) at the start of baking, the cookie is able to spread out before the heat-caused changes in the other ingredients firm it up. At the other extreme is shortening which is manufactured to have a higher melting point resulting in the least-spread-out, highest cookies.

One reason trans fats were so ubiquitous in commercial baked goods is that they could be engineered for very specific melting points.

Once upon a time just about any brand of margarine could be substituted for butter (I'm talking about texture, not flavor) but they have been reformulated so it's now impossible to generalize. I also don't see why margarine, also a manufactured fat, would have less of a gag factor than shortening.

Just to muddy the waters - I make them with coconut oil which makes them spread out more, but keeps them fresh longer. We take a trough-load of them on a road trip and the last one is just as soft and fresh as the first. Sometimes at home I use half butter and half coconut oil if I have excess butter, but we prefer them made with all CO.

Thanks Annie, that was a thorough, concise, and useful summary.

I save myself all the trouble and fuss and just eat the chocolate chips straight out of the bag. Lots faster. ;)

Rosie, does coconut oil make them soft or crisp?

Thanks,

Lee

Wow -- a science lesson. Thanks everyone. I'm going to make some more tomorrow so I'll try baking longer, or making some half this and half that.

I actually would love chocolate chipless cookies. I pick out the ones with the least chips.

I have no answer to why crisco makes me gag but margarine doesn't. All between the ears, I guess.

Is coconut oil a trans-fat? I'm not sure. I do try to stay away from that. I know palm oil is a trans fat and I thought that applied to all tropical oils, but what I do I know.

Thanks for all the responses!

I think trans fats are on the nutritional info chart nowadays, so you can always check there. No natural oils have trans fats--I really don't know but perhaps palm oil has traditionally been processed into a trans fat? It's a totally human invention.

Is coconut oil one of the oils that is healthier than butter? That would be nice...as far as keeping the cookies fresh longer, that certainly isn't a concern around here!

(I also prefer them with fewer chips--more nuts though!)

Dedtired, yep, all between the ears... lol

Crisco is made from vegetable oil, the same as margarine, but margarine has salt and colorings... Salt can make a lot of things tastier... lol

Many moons ago, when I was a kid, Mom would buy oleo... Well, that's what she called it... It came in a plastic bag, maybe about 12 inches long and 4 or 5 inches wide... It contained vegetable shortening and a small dark orange spot, smack dab in the center... You'd kneed the bag until you had yellow 'butter'.... lol

BTW, when I made Toll House Cookies, if they were for a gift they were made with half butter and half margarine but for just us it was either all margarine or half Crisco and half margarine ( depending on what I had on hand )...

Rita

Lee - it makes them soft, which we like. To make them crisp I'd let them stay in the oven a couple extra minutes.

Here is more than you ever wanted to know about the health properties of coconut oil:

http://www.coconutdiet.com/health_benefits_coconut_oil.htm

http://www.coconutdiet.com/health_benefits_coconut_oil.htm

http://www.healthinformationlibrary.com/coconut-oil.htm

Here is a link that might be useful: coconut oil info

Here ya go, deadtired. A history of Toll House Cookies. I think Ruth should have asked Nestles for big $$$ not just a lifetime supply of chocolate! She could have retired in wealth and had some make cookies for her!!! Enjoy.
Barbara

Here is a link that might be useful: History of Toll House Cookies

We like them really flat and crispy. After much experimentation I have found that using a good brand of margarine instead of butter, more white than brown sugar, and 2 tbsp. of milk in place of one egg produces a nice flat, crisp cookie that stays fresh for enough days to eat them all up.

Rita -- my 90 year old mom still calls it oleo. She tells stories of getting acapsule with red coloring in it that you broke open and mixed into the oleo. Glad I don't have to do that.

Yep, Ruth got suckered. Too bad.

So I think I will spend a lot of time baking this weekend and try some of the varieties mentioned here. I plan to make some chipless ones for me! The first batch I made got mailed to CA for my older son. I kept a few at home but I notice son #2 was at the house and ate what was left.

I notice that the milk consumption seems to go up with the cookie consumption. We love dunking them in milk.

So am I the only one who doesn't like the word morsels? Something about that word is icky.

Morsel. It's like a dab of soggy food that gets stuck in an old man's filthy beard. It sounds moist.

We call them 'chocolate chips'.

Oh Fori, that's hilarious. Exactly what it brings to mind! Like something someone picked out of their teeth. Yuck.

I usually buy Guittard or Ghirardelli chocolate chips. Alice wanted the Toll House recipe and grabbed a bag of Nestle chips. They taste terrible by comparison but like I said, I skip the cookie part and eat them straight from the bag. I like chocolate cookies sans chips and the chips on the side.

A long time ago as a teen I made mint chocolate chip cookies by adding mint extract to the dough. I also added green food coloring to the mix. They tasted great - in the dark! Damn ugly cookies!

Have you ever made them with the other chocolate chips besides the regular semi-sweet? DH loves them with the "Special Dark Chocolate" and DS prefers the "Milk Chocolate" Here are all the different kinds of chips.
Clare

Ah a morsel - The word comes from Middle English - French and Latin origins a bite & to bite - definitions from Websters include: small bite, something delectable, a tasty dish and a negligible person

Brings to mind and lends a new understanding of something we used to like to say years ago: "What foods these morsels be" (Sorry Will: "What fools these mortals be")