Keep your hug, I need a cookie!

November 7, 2012 7:35 AM

I want to make these cookies!

I want that irregular lumpy chocolate chip cookie with that crispy exterior edge and soft interior -- not wet-underbaked-gooey dense but not so cakey-light. Ice cream scoop for size and shape, obviously, but how to get it to hold its form? How do I modify my standard Toll House recipe to achieve this gorgeous behemoth? More baking soda? Lower temp, longer baking time? Freeze first? Secret ingredient? Completely different recipe?

posted by ohcanireally to Food & Drink (15 answers total)

I would definitely make sure the dough is COLD when baking. That should keep them from spreading as much. Here's a recipe on a blog. Not sure how it compares to your Toll House one.
posted by coolsara at 7:41 AM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Never had any luck keeping my cookie interiors soft until I tried making them with instant vanilla pudding in the dough. Keeping the dough very cold will help, too, and you may try reducing wet ingredients a bit to get the cookies to stay mounded, but that added ingredient was the critical texture-related step for me.
posted by Bardolph at 7:47 AM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

Try this recipe for Ultra Thick Chocolate Chip Cookies.
posted by zinon at 7:47 AM on November 7, 2012

A little more flour might stiffen the dough, and the thickness would keep it from getting too dry. But I'm not that confident in experimenting with recipes, so you should look to others for better guidance.

Just wanted to say that the mounded shape (esp. the wrinkles) make it look like it was squeezed/piped from a tube, in the style of soft-serve ice cream. So rather than rolling a ball (and counting on low spread), you might want to either pour it slowly from a bowl or put it into a pastry bag with no tip and squeeze it into a puddle in several steps (to get the lava-flow wrinkle layers).

Good luck! never seen cookies like that.
posted by acm at 7:47 AM on November 7, 2012

Here's a thorough Chowhound thread on 'tall/lumpy' chocolate chip cookies.

The near-last response seems to have made a good clone. I know they're aiming to emulate a different recipe (Carol's Cookies) but it seems like a good jumping-off point, as they both appear to be thick, tall cookies.
posted by rachaelfaith at 7:47 AM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I would guess that they use shortening rather than butter (or perhaps a combo, since straight-up shortening doesn't really taste great). A blog post that I randomly Googled shows some shortening vs. butter cookies; you can see how the shortening makes the structure "set" more.
posted by bcwinters at 8:06 AM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]

I recently made cookies with a melted chocolate/butter mixture added to the dough. The cookies ended up flat (see advice on cold dough above for that), but the cookies were incredibly rich and chewy. That might help!
posted by anaximander at 8:06 AM on November 7, 2012

My recipe that's over on Bean Plates is an oatmeal chocolate chip cookie that's thick with a crispy exterior - it's not as cakey as a plain chocolate chip, but the the interior is soft. Freezing the dough is one of the key components. The advantage to flash-freezing the whole batch and baking only a few at a time is that you can have one perfectly warm fresh-baked cookie within 12 minutes.
posted by peagood at 8:11 AM on November 7, 2012

Alton Brown addresses these sorts of questions in his episodes Three Chips for Sister Marsha, in which he modifies the Toll House Recipe (which he never names in the episode-- that show tended to "greek" any brand name merch out of the show) to achieve 3 different texture outcomes compared to your bog-standard Toll House recipe, while still producing little more than a chocolate chip cookie.

Start with the Puffy recipe (butter-flavored shortening, brown sugar, cake flour) and tinker from there. If you're interested in the science behind the changes, you can probably locate the episode on youtube, and certainly in his books (he has 3 volumes covering the bulk of his Good Eats episodes). Generally speaking, puffy vs. flat has to do with the timing of the cookie's solidification versus its tendency to run flat like a puddle due to the heat.
posted by Sunburnt at 8:15 AM on November 7, 2012

Looks to me like cookie dough that was scooped with a big dough scoop (like an ice cream scoop) and frozen in the ball; and baked frozen (not thawed first.)
posted by fingersandtoes at 8:16 AM on November 7, 2012

I once saw a Bobby Flay Throwdown episode where he challenged the Levain Bakery in NYC to a chocolate chip walnut cookie throwdown. I happened to be in NYC the following week and bought a cookie at that bakery. It was the most delicious cookie I've ever eaten, and was very thick and soft inside.

Here is a recipe for a Levain Bakery-style chocolate chip cookie which should give you the big thick cookie you're looking for. Walnuts are, of course, optional.
posted by essexjan at 8:25 AM on November 7, 2012

A transcript for the Alton Brown cookie episode that Sunburnt references can be found here:
Three Chips for Sister Marsha

I've used some of the hints in there to head in the other direction - super thin and crispy cookies.
posted by Sabby at 9:07 AM on November 7, 2012

I can't speak for the texture, but I can speak for how you get that shape. Scoop the dough with a melon baller or cookie scoop, freeze the balls individually, and pop the still-frozen balls onto the baking sheet for baking.
posted by juniperesque at 9:57 AM on November 7, 2012

Shortening has a higher melting point than butter which delays the spreading of the cookie longer. Use butter flavored shortening, it tastes better than plain shortening.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but the bowler hat shape makes me think that they did a double baking - started a cookie with a little spread to it (maybe warm dough), baked it for 5 minutes then plunked a blob of super cold dough on top and finished it out.
posted by plinth at 10:38 AM on November 7, 2012

It's hard to tell from the picture, but the bowler hat shape makes me think that they did a double baking - started a cookie with a little spread to it (maybe warm dough), baked it for 5 minutes then plunked a blob of super cold dough on top and finished it out.

I thought the same thing -- it definitely looks like a cookie on top of a cookie.

It looks amazing.
posted by la petite marie at 11:02 AM on November 7, 2012 [1 favorite]