Perfect “American-Style” Chocolate Chip Cookies
My partner regularly complains that it’s impossible to get good chocolate chip cookies in Australia. Crisp on the outside, chewy on the inside. Well, no more.
This recipe is adapted from this recipe, but adjusted for proper metric units (I hate the way American recipes convert to metric units… we still use cups!), and with a couple of simplifications.
Her review is that I nailed it. She’s a critic of my food, so I take that as praise!.
Usual disclaimer: I’m not a food blogger or chef, just someone who likes to do things right. I like baking as much as I like coding, tinkering on guitars, or practising combat sports, so I keep my own recipes here for my own records — and to share them.
For context, Australian cookies are often “breadier”. I presume there are good cookies out there, but they’re just not available everywhere, and definitely not cheap.
… I mean, many complain that “cookies” isn’t even an Australian word; older generation people often say “biscuits”. A packaged biscuit in Australia is basically a flat, hard military-grade disc that’s unpleasantly hard when fresh and unpleasantly soft when stale. It gets nothing right. It’s a different animal. So I have no qualms about using the word “cookies”.
Also, if anyone tells me not to use a word for some arbitrary reason, I’ll tell them I speak English better than them, better than 99.99% of people (Dunning Kruger can eat a bag), and definitely better than anyone who slavishly conforms to prescriptivist language norms, so they can get stuffed. (/rant)
Ingredients
Dry ingredients
- 2 cups + 2 tablespoons flour (270 g as I measured it)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda (not baking powder!)
- 2 teaspoons cornflour (to add crispy chewiness)
- 1 teaspoon cooking salt
Wet ingredients
- 175 g butter, melted and cooled
- 1 cup brown sugar, lightly packed
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs (from 700g dozen)
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 200g chocolate chips, plus more for topping
Instructions
Prep:
- In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda, cornflour, and salt.
- In a large bowl, beat the cooled melted butter and sugars with a mixer for about a minute (it should be lighter in colour than when you started, and creamy and uniform). Add in the eggs and vanilla, and beat until combined.
- Add the dry ingredients about 1/4 at at time to the wet ingredients, mixing briefly, until there are no clumps left.
- Fold in the chocolate chips.
- Refrigerate this mixture for 30 minutes to an hour.
Baking:
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees (fan forced).
- Line two baking sheets with baking paper
- Prepare the cookies:
- Scoop 1/4 cup of the mixture.
- Roll it into a ball.
- Break it in half. Turn the “rough” sides up., and combine them.
- You can also use just the half, if you want smaller cookies
- Put some chocolate chips on top and press them in
- Leave plenty of space between the cookies — I can fit 4-6 per tray.
- Full-sized cookies: Bake for 10 minutes. If you’re making the smaller ones, bake for 9 minutes.
- Note – these temperatures work for my oven, but mine is a fairly high-quality electric oven with little heat leakage.
- When they’re done, allow them to cool on the tray. They’ll keep cooking.
Note: Your oven may be vastly different. I’d suggest you use a few trays, and take one out at 9 minutes, another out at 10, another out at 11… I did this during the day, with free solar power, so as not to waste energy!
Store them in a sealed container with something to absorb moisture. Or don’t seal the container and keep them in the fridge.
