Not Sourdough Chocolate Chip Cookies

Because sometimes you just want a cookie in under 30 minutes, try these extremely rich and flavorful choco chip bad boys. These are simple, no nonsense chocolate chip cookies that are elevated by the slightest pinch of whole grain pastry flour. This adds a soft, tenderness to the dough as well as a nutty flavor. If you don’t have this kind of pastry flour, use regular whole grain flour or just use all purpose flour all the way through the bake.

Ingredients

You’ve probably been eating chocolate chip cookies your whole life. I don’t know about you, but I’m at the point in my life where I should definitely not be eating too many cookies, so if I’m going to eat them they’ve got to be made from high quality ingredients. Here is a run down of the ingredients and what you should look for to make sure you make the best possible tasting cookies.

Flour

For your basic chocolate chip cookies, it’s best not to get too in the weeds about using various whole grains and such. There is a time and place for them, but not here. I recommend using All Purpose Flour primarily, and a small pinch of whole grain pastry flour if you can find it. Adding 10% whole grain pastry flour adds just enough of a softness to the texture and a slight nuttiness to the flavor to where you get something different but nothing too radically different from a simple and delicious chocolate chip cookie.

Butter

As usual, use unsalted butter when making chocolate cookies and make sure it is of decent quality. Essentially, you want to get a butter with a higher fat content than normal butter. These are labeled as “European Style” butters and you can find them at your local grocery store. Don’t get confused with margarine. You want pure butter to make the best cookies.

You also want to make sure you focus on temperature. The butter must be completely softened, naturally. Meaning, you don’t want to get caught trying to microwave it to soften it because that messes with the moisture content of the butter and will give you a not so pleasant cookie. I find it best to leave your butter out overnight to make your cookies the next day.

Sugar

For these cookies, I find that a mixture of two different sugars works best: light brown sugar and raw cane sugar. The light brown sugar is going to add more moisture to the cookies than if the whole dough was made with just granulated sugar. However, using dark brown sugar will result in a deeper flavor due to the higher molasses content. I prefer the flavor given by light brown sugar.

What is raw cane sugar? This is a minimally processed sugar that is derived from sugarcane juice and as a result it retains a small amount of molasses, but not as much as you would find in brown sugar. I find that using raw cane sugar is a much better option than plain white granulated sugar. But of course, feel free to utilize regular granulated sugar in place of this if it is all you have or are familiar with using.

Vanilla

There are 3 main types of vanilla that you might find yourself looking at in the grocery store: vanilla extract, vanilla bean paste, and actual vanilla bean. Here are the differences:

Vanilla Extract – this is the most common and affordable option. This is essentially a highly concentrated vanilla flavoring that is made by soaking vanilla beans in water and alcohol for a period of time. It works great in cookies and is very easy to find.

Vanilla Bean Paste – This is a thick paste that’s made of the vanilla bean pod, vanilla extract, and thickeners that make for an extremely potent flavor. It’s my favorite form of vanilla to use because a nice dollop of this goes a very long way, and I find that the flavor pops more! You should be able to find this at most big super markets.

Vanilla Bean – Vanilla Beans are not often stocked at most stores, but you can occasionally find them. They tend to be pricey and rather tedious to break down, but on their own they do yield the absolute best possible vanilla flavor in your baked goods.

Chocolate

Ah yes, the star of the show. A chocolate chip cookie is only as good as the chocolate that you use to make it. If you have my book Pan y Dulce, you can read a little bit more about the origin of chocolate and how it was used back in the day. Here, I want to give you a simple breakdown of the types of chocolate that you will likely find at the grocery store, and which ones to use in this recipe:

Milk Chocolate Chips – these are extremely common, but I don’t ever use them. Milk chocolate is essentially chocolate with more sugar and milk added to make it sweeter and more milder in terms of true chocolate flavor. When it comes to baking, especially making cookies, this is a hard pass for me.

50-55% aka Semi Sweet Chocolate – The percentage that you see denoted when it comes to semi-sweet chocolate is the amount of cocoa solids that you will find in the chocolate. The flavor is quite versatile, as it is considered to be on the sweeter side for a “dark” chocolate. I would say that this is 100% my favorite type of chocolate to bake with, and if you can find it in large blocks and chunk it up yourself, it will give your cookies more personality.

70% aka Bittersweet Chocolate – As the name might imply, bittersweet chocolate is more “bitter” than sweet. With roughly 70% cocoa solids, you’re going to get a much bolder and richer chocolate flavor that is still slightly sweetened. This is also a must use when making cookies as you get a great balance in flavor when you combine this with other chocolates. It also makes a good chocolate to use when topping your cookies before baking.

How Do I Mix The Ingredients?

When making cookies, it’s important that you utilize a few principles across the board.

Always start by mixing your dry ingredients together (note that this does not include the sugar). You want your flours, baking powder/soda, and salt to be homogenized and set to the side ready to incorporate into the mix easily Not only do you want the disbursement of the leavening agent to be even, but as soon as that leavening agent comes into contact with moisture, it begins to activate, so you don’t want it to happen to quickly.
Your butter needs to be at room temperature and soft to the touch. Butter than is softened and at room temperature when compared to warm or melted butter is able to be creamed and hold onto air, which in turn gives you a much lighter cookie.

How Do I Store The Cookies?

To store any leftover cookie dough, place onto a sheet of aluminum foil or plastic wrap and roll into a tight log. You can freeze this log and slice off medallions of cookies to bake later. Alternatively, you can ball them into 100 gram pieces and squeeze them all together on a sheet tray, wrap and freeze for later use. Baking directly from frozen yields a tighter, chewier cookie than baking after thawing.