Danielle's "The Chewy"

I never much liked the Tollhouse cookie recipe growing up, although we often made it for lack of a better recipe. I always thought they were too cakey. But when Alton Brown said it's the only recipe he uses for chocolate chip cookies, I thought it was worth another shot -- especially with his adjustments.

I followed "The Chewy" recipe, with the exception that I used two whole eggs instead of replacing one of the whites with milk. All I had was skim milk and I didn't know how that would turn out. I also don't really like cookies that spread a lot, so I thought I might prefer it with the whole eggs.

I have to say that after making these, I remembered why I didn't like them growing up. Although these were a little less cakey and puffy than what we made growing up, I just don't like the texture of these cookies. I like my cookies to be more dense. I have another recipe that I got from my grandma called "Mrs. Fields Cookies" -- I have no idea if it's really the Mrs. Fields recipe -- but I like it a lot more than these. They are dense and chewy and just a little crunchy on the outside. I haven't found a recipe to beat it yet.

I made one pan of these, and I've just been eating the rest as cookie dough. Cookie dough is always delicious!

Cami's Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made a huge mess of these cookies but it all came out in the end. For some reason when I was measuring the dry ingredients I accidentally measured twice as many as the recipe calls for. So I had way too much sugar, flour etc. I didn't realize this until I was adding the flour at the end and thinking "Wow, this is not wet at all". Thanks to Maren for having wet dough so I knew mine was wrong. I quickly added more wet ingredients in hopes it would all work out in the end. It did! When I baked them that night I didn't love them. The dough was good though. The next day though, the cookies were great. I was surprised they could have such a change overnight. 

The picture is what the balls look like right now. They are in my freezer setting up so I can move them to a baggie. That's how I store dough. We only bake 6-12 and then leave the rest in the freezer until we need more.

I used white whole wheat flour and Jason couldn't tell! If I would have told him he probably would have found something wrong with them but he said they were great. I've replaced all of my regular white flour with white whole wheat. It really is very similar in taste but just better. I get it at Trader Joe's for pretty cheap.

Three Chips Transcript

This is one episode I highly recommend reading (or at least skimming) the transcript. I saw this episode last year and, no joke, I got out a notepad and vigorously took notes. This was the kind of baking chemistry stuff that I have no idea about.

Alton Brown talks about how the different ingredients change the type of cookie you end up with -- thin, crunchy, chewy, puffy, etc. This is the kind of info you can take and tweak any cookie recipe to make it more to your liking.


You can find the episode transcript HERE.


Here are some of the basic takeaway concepts:

- More baking soda makes a thinner cookie
- More baking powder makes a puffier cookie
- Butter makes cookies spread, use chilled butter for a cookie that spreads less
- Brown sugar makes chewier cookies
- Cake flour produces more steam which creates more lift and results in puffier cookies
- Bread flour produces more gluten and results in chewier cookies
- Substituting milk for some of the egg makes a cookie that spreads more

Hope that helps!

Danielle's Monster Cookies

This recipe makes a TON! I baked about a dozen good-sized cookies, and I still have a large tupperware full of dough in the fridge. But it seems like the dough will keep well in the fridge/freezer so this batch will last us awhile.

These are very tasty cookies. I was a little skeptical when I read the recipe, but they came out really well. The texture of the cookie is just like I like it -- a little crispy on the outside (although they didn't really stay crispy) but chewy in the middle. And I love the oats, peanut butter, and chocolate together.

Max thinks these would be better with just M&Ms (replacing the chocolate chips with M&Ms), but I don't really care if it's chocolate chips or M&Ms as long as there's plenty of chocolate! I personally like chocolate chips because I can buy better quality chocolate, but one advantage of the M&Ms is that they don't melt and spread all over.

I baked a few cookies before I chilled the dough because I'm usually not patient enough to wait for dough to be chilled. The non-chilled cookies didn't have as uniform of a shape, but I didn't think there was any noticeable difference between the chilled and un-chilled dough. So if you can't wait, you can definitely get away with baking these before you chill the dough.

With the batches I made with chilled dough, I smashed the cookies down with a spatula about halfway through baking because the cookies were not spreading. I wanted bigger flatter cookies instead of big tall mounded cookies.

Cami's Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these on Friday and have been eating the dough ever since. I did bake about 6 cookies to find flat but tasty cookies. I always use mini chocolate chips because I like the chocolate coverage. I did add the full 16 oz of chocolate chips but I'm sure this didn't help the spreading and flattening. Since I prefer dough anyway, it doesn't bother me that it makes flat cookies. In fact when I make cookies I give Jason the option of having good cookies or good dough. It's hard to have both.

This won't be my go to cookie recipe but it is really tasty, especially in dough form. I baked apple tarts for Easter and had a little leftover tart dough. I threw some of this cookie dough and it came out beautifully as a tart.

Melanie W.'s Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these today and just finished cooking them about 15 minutes ago, and I've already eaten at least five. Oops! Cookies sure are good warm though!!

Taking into consideration the other experiences, I made a few modifications to mine and I ended up having the opposite experience as LuAnn and Danielle! I thought the dough was ok but not the best, and my cookies didn't go flat! I wanted to make sure they wouldn't go flat, so I did some google research and found some helpful tips. Keep reading and I'll share the secrets to my success!

From what I read, the temperature of the butter and dough is super important. You need it to stay cold. The recipes said to use softened butter, but I used cold butter straight from the fridge. I also bought expensive butter imported from Ireland, mostly just to try it, and I don't think I'll ever do that again. I don't think it enhanced the flavor at all. Anyway, I creamed the cold butter with the sugars using a hand mixer- this way you have more control over how much the butter is creamed. You don't want to overcream the butter! What I read said blend a little, mash the butter with the beaters, blend a little, and it's ok if there are still a few lumps of butter. Then I stuck the creamed butter/sugar back in the fridge for 10 minutes to make sure it stayed cold.

I made sure my eggs were cold straight from the fridge. Make sure you blend them one at a time, thoroughly.

I added 2 Tbsp. extra flour. This also helps the cookies keep their fluff.

Make sure you don't over mix the wet and dry ingredients together. Mix just until blended. I used my stand mixer for the eggs, vanilla, and dry ingredients, then hand mixed the chocolate chips.

I used less chocolate chips than called for, only 12 oz. Too many chocolate chips can cause more spreading.

I chilled the dough for the full 6 hours. (This seemed a bit excessive, but I did what they said.)

I chilled my cookie sheets. Supposedly warm cookie sheets can cause the dough to spread faster. Honestly, I don't think this made much of a difference. It seemed like as soon as I took the cookie sheets out of the refrigerator they warmed up to room temp anyway.

I have an oven thermometer and I made sure the oven temp was exactly 375.

While I was waiting for batches to cook, I kept the remaining dough in the fridge so it would stay cold.

All in all, something I did worked and the cookies turned out nice. They were slightly crispy on the outside, soft in the middle, and not overly browned. I don't think this is my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe- they taste like a lot of others, but they were good.

Ok, this is pretty cheesy because it's just like the picture in the book, but I was having fun with my camera. :)

Danielle's Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these a couple of months ago.

Like LuAnn said, this recipe makes the most delicious cookie dough! A good portion of mine got eaten as dough as well.

I made them at night and it was too late to chill the dough if I was going to get to eat any. So I made some that night and then put the rest of the dough in the fridge. Both ways I made them (chilled and not chilled), the cookies spread quite a bit and were pretty flat. The chilled dough didn't spread as much, but they were still flat cookies.

I don't mind a flat cookie, but I didn't like that the cookies browned so much. Was that just my oven or is it the dough? If anyone else makes them, let me know if you had the same experience. I kept thinking they were burning but they didn't look set yet. Even though they were pretty brown, they stayed chewy, but I still didn't really like the flavor they got from being so browned.

I can't really say why, but I thought the cookies tasted better the day after I made them.

Overall, these were tasty, but this won't be my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe. I might make it again some day, but these won't replace my favorite recipe.