Please note, this cookie gets better with time! Seriously! It's best to refrigerate the batter overnight. But in addition to that, the cookie tastes better hours after its baked; in fact, it tastes even better the following day. So this makes a perfect make ahead dessert for parties and potlucks.
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Swirl the pan from time to time and stir with a heat-resistant spatula to avoid scorching your pan. Browning the butter will likely take you about 6-7 minutes. You will know when you are getting close - the butter will smell very nutty, start to turn light golden brown colour and the hissing sound will stop (which indicates the water would've evaporated.) Remove from heat, stir and allow the mixture to cool completely, for about half an hour. Or pop it into the fridge to speed up the cooling process.
You will have little brown flakes in your butter. Do not strain these flavour bombs!
While the butter is cooling, chop your chocolate and place in a bowl. Add the flour to the bowl with the chocolate.
When the butter is cool, place it in a bowl of a standard mixer, add granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, baking soda and vanilla and beat on medium high for 5 minutes until fluffy. Stop the mixer, scrape the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating on medium and ensuring it's fully incorporated before adding the next egg. Beat everything on medium for about 30 seconds.
Stop the mixer and add your flour chocolate mixture all at once. On low, mix until incorporated and no streaks of flour remain. Stop the mixer, scrape the sides of the bowl and mix for another 15 seconds or so.
At this point, your batter must be refrigerated for 15-30 minutes before proceeding to the next step. You may even refrigerate it overnight and up to 3 days. It won't ruin your cookies, in fact - long refrigeration will allow the flavour to improve.
In the meantime, preheat the oven to 325°.
After the refrigeration, with a medium-sized ice cream scoop, shape the cookies into uniform shapes. If you refrigerated for more than an hour and especially overnight, you will need to take the cookies out around 2 hours before baking until the dough is pliable.
Alternatively, rip the portions with your hands. Each cookie should be 3 tablespoons plus one teaspoon of the dough (heaping medium-sized ice cream scoop.) Make sure all the cookies are uniform so they bake evenly. Do not roll into smooth balls. In fact, if the shaped dough is too smooth, rough up the surface a bit with a fork or your hands, do not compress the dough. Place 6 shaped cookies on parchment-lined baking sheet, leaving plenty of room in between to account for spread.
Bake your cookies in preheated oven. The time will vary. 13.5-15.5 minutes is the general guideline. Mine are always ready in almost exactly 14.5 minutes. But that will depend on the exact size of your cookies (if you shaped yours smaller - you may need to bake for a lot less... BUT don't shape them smaller as they won't be as soft in the middle; conversely, if you shaped yours bigger - you will need more time.) Everyone's oven may run hotter or colder. So watch closely. The cookies should be puffed, still very soft, and slightly golden brown around the edges. Remember, your cookies will still cook on the baking sheet when you remove them and the sugars and butter will set and the cookies will firm up.
One trick I can suggest is to bake 1 cookie first. Take it out at around 14.5 minutes as per guidelines above, let it cool and see if you like that texture. I'm pretty sure at 14.5 minutes you will be happy with the texture, maybe even baking few seconds less next time. This additional trick really pays off as you will learn and adjust what works best for you before making the whole batch.
These cookies firm up a lot as they cool!
Now, let's make your cookie looks like a professional cookie! This shaping process must be done as soon as your cookies come out of the oven. Not only will this make your cookie perfectly round, it will make it very even and uniform in size, slightly thicker and chewier.
Take a round container about 1" bigger in diameter than your cookie (I use glass round 5" container.) Gently place on top of the cookie, so that your cookie is now inside your container turned upside down, rotating it counter-clockwise, letting the cookie bounce around inside the container (again, this must be done gently to avoid breaking the cookie.) When you lift your container, you will find that your cookie compresses in size a bit, becomes perfectly round and a bit taller than before you started rotating it. It will have that perfect bakery style look and texture. Allow the cookie to cool for at least 5 minutes on the baking sheet for the crumb to set - it will harden as it cools. Finish cooling completely on the wire racks or dig in and enjoy while still warm.
I prefer to use a mix of chocolate in this cookie - 50% classic good quality chocolate chips, 25% white chocolate, chopped, and 25% semi sweet baker's chocolate, chopped.
You can change up the sugar ratios as long as you end up with around 24-26 tablesspoons of sugar in total (one cup equals 16 TBSP.) White sugar makes the cookie a bit more crisp and makes it spread out more; brown sugar is responsible for the chewiness. My original cookie recipe had 3/4 cup sugar and 3/4 cup plus 2 TBSP light brown sugar. However, over time, based on feedback I received for these cookies, I changed the sugar to 1 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup plus 1 TBSP granulated sugar. Now with such high ratio of brown sugar, you must let the cookies rest in the fridge overnight to achieve superior results. It's essential to the success of your recipe, as it will allow enough time for the flour to hydrate. Otherwise they will not spread as well.
With all the extra work we are doing for these uneblievable cookies, make sure to take the extra step of measuring your flour correctly, to prevent your cookie from being too dense. Spoon your flour into a cup measure and then level it by "shaving" the excess flour off without compressing it into the cup.
Ingredients
Directions
Melt butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Swirl the pan from time to time and stir with a heat-resistant spatula to avoid scorching your pan. Browning the butter will likely take you about 6-7 minutes. You will know when you are getting close - the butter will smell very nutty, start to turn light golden brown colour and the hissing sound will stop (which indicates the water would've evaporated.) Remove from heat, stir and allow the mixture to cool completely, for about half an hour. Or pop it into the fridge to speed up the cooling process.
You will have little brown flakes in your butter. Do not strain these flavour bombs!
While the butter is cooling, chop your chocolate and place in a bowl. Add the flour to the bowl with the chocolate.
When the butter is cool, place it in a bowl of a standard mixer, add granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, baking soda and vanilla and beat on medium high for 5 minutes until fluffy. Stop the mixer, scrape the side of the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating on medium and ensuring it's fully incorporated before adding the next egg. Beat everything on medium for about 30 seconds.
Stop the mixer and add your flour chocolate mixture all at once. On low, mix until incorporated and no streaks of flour remain. Stop the mixer, scrape the sides of the bowl and mix for another 15 seconds or so.
At this point, your batter must be refrigerated for 15-30 minutes before proceeding to the next step. You may even refrigerate it overnight and up to 3 days. It won't ruin your cookies, in fact - long refrigeration will allow the flavour to improve.
In the meantime, preheat the oven to 325°.
After the refrigeration, with a medium-sized ice cream scoop, shape the cookies into uniform shapes. If you refrigerated for more than an hour and especially overnight, you will need to take the cookies out around 2 hours before baking until the dough is pliable.
Alternatively, rip the portions with your hands. Each cookie should be 3 tablespoons plus one teaspoon of the dough (heaping medium-sized ice cream scoop.) Make sure all the cookies are uniform so they bake evenly. Do not roll into smooth balls. In fact, if the shaped dough is too smooth, rough up the surface a bit with a fork or your hands, do not compress the dough. Place 6 shaped cookies on parchment-lined baking sheet, leaving plenty of room in between to account for spread.
Bake your cookies in preheated oven. The time will vary. 13.5-15.5 minutes is the general guideline. Mine are always ready in almost exactly 14.5 minutes. But that will depend on the exact size of your cookies (if you shaped yours smaller - you may need to bake for a lot less... BUT don't shape them smaller as they won't be as soft in the middle; conversely, if you shaped yours bigger - you will need more time.) Everyone's oven may run hotter or colder. So watch closely. The cookies should be puffed, still very soft, and slightly golden brown around the edges. Remember, your cookies will still cook on the baking sheet when you remove them and the sugars and butter will set and the cookies will firm up.
One trick I can suggest is to bake 1 cookie first. Take it out at around 14.5 minutes as per guidelines above, let it cool and see if you like that texture. I'm pretty sure at 14.5 minutes you will be happy with the texture, maybe even baking few seconds less next time. This additional trick really pays off as you will learn and adjust what works best for you before making the whole batch.
These cookies firm up a lot as they cool!
Now, let's make your cookie looks like a professional cookie! This shaping process must be done as soon as your cookies come out of the oven. Not only will this make your cookie perfectly round, it will make it very even and uniform in size, slightly thicker and chewier.
Take a round container about 1" bigger in diameter than your cookie (I use glass round 5" container.) Gently place on top of the cookie, so that your cookie is now inside your container turned upside down, rotating it counter-clockwise, letting the cookie bounce around inside the container (again, this must be done gently to avoid breaking the cookie.) When you lift your container, you will find that your cookie compresses in size a bit, becomes perfectly round and a bit taller than before you started rotating it. It will have that perfect bakery style look and texture. Allow the cookie to cool for at least 5 minutes on the baking sheet for the crumb to set - it will harden as it cools. Finish cooling completely on the wire racks or dig in and enjoy while still warm.
I prefer to use a mix of chocolate in this cookie - 50% classic good quality chocolate chips, 25% white chocolate, chopped, and 25% semi sweet baker's chocolate, chopped.
You can change up the sugar ratios as long as you end up with around 24-26 tablesspoons of sugar in total (one cup equals 16 TBSP.) White sugar makes the cookie a bit more crisp and makes it spread out more; brown sugar is responsible for the chewiness. My original cookie recipe had 3/4 cup sugar and 3/4 cup plus 2 TBSP light brown sugar. However, over time, based on feedback I received for these cookies, I changed the sugar to 1 cup brown sugar and 1/2 cup plus 1 TBSP granulated sugar. Now with such high ratio of brown sugar, you must let the cookies rest in the fridge overnight to achieve superior results. It's essential to the success of your recipe, as it will allow enough time for the flour to hydrate. Otherwise they will not spread as well.
With all the extra work we are doing for these uneblievable cookies, make sure to take the extra step of measuring your flour correctly, to prevent your cookie from being too dense. Spoon your flour into a cup measure and then level it by "shaving" the excess flour off without compressing it into the cup.
