Chocolate chip cookies: browned butter, an hour in the fridge, a soft centre
American chocolate chip cookies done properly: butter browned to a nutty amber, two sugars instead of one, chocolate chopped with a knife instead of chips, and dough chilled for at least an hour. They come out of the oven while the centre still looks raw: they finish on the hot tray and stay soft in the middle, crisp at the edge.
Your own work in that: 30 min.
- Dough 30 min
- Chilling 60 min
- Baking 36 min
- Cooling 10 min
Step by step
0 / 7 doneBrown the butter
Melt the butter in a light-coloured saucepan over medium heat and cook 5–7 minutes, stirring. It will bubble and foam, then the foam subsides and brown specks appear on the bottom along with a nutty smell. Pour it into a bowl at once, specks and all.
Ingredients: 200 g butter · 2 tbsp milk · 150 g brown sugar · 100 g white sugar · 2 pcs eggs · 1 tbsp vanilla sugar · 300 g plain flour · 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda · ½ tsp salt · 200 g dark chocolate
TipThose brown specks are toasted milk proteins and the whole flavour of this recipe. The pan must be light inside, because in a dark one you cannot see the moment butter turns from nutty to burnt; it is a matter of thirty seconds.
Amber, with brown specks at the bottomCool it and beat in the sugars
Add 2 tablespoons of milk to the hot butter (browning boiled water out of it; the milk puts it back) and cool 20 minutes, until the butter is lukewarm and slightly thickened. Add both sugars and beat with a mixer 2 minutes into a thick, glossy paste.
TipBrown sugar contains molasses, which is acidic and holds water: that is what gives the chewy, moist centre. White sugar alone gives flat, snappy biscuits.
Lukewarm butter, two sugars, two minutesBeat in the eggs
Add the eggs one at a time, beating half a minute after each, then the vanilla sugar. The mixture should be smooth, pale and fall from the beaters in a ribbon.
One at a time, to a pale ribbonAdd the flour and chocolate
Sift the flour, soda and salt over the mixture and fold with a spatula only until the flour disappears. Set aside a handful of the larger chocolate pieces for the tops, add the rest and fold twice more.
TipChocolate chopped with a knife gives pieces of every size: the large shards melt into pockets, the dust dissolves into the dough and darkens it. Ready-made chips are usually made to hold their shape in the oven, so they do not melt like that.
Briefly, then the chocolateChill an hour, ideally a day
Cover the dough with film and refrigerate at least an hour, and if you have time, 24–48 hours. Cold dough enters the oven as a firm ball, so it spreads more slowly and the cookies come out thick rather than flat.
TipWhile it rests the flour absorbs moisture and enzymes break starch down into simple sugars. After a day the cookies bake darker and taste noticeably deeper and more caramel.
An hour is the minimum, a day is another leagueScoop the balls
Heat the oven to 190 °C. Roll the dough into 20 balls of about 50 g (an ice-cream scoop helps) and space 8 per tray, well apart: they roughly double in width. Press a piece of the reserved chocolate on top of each and sprinkle with a flake of salt.
Ingredients: 200 g butter · 2 tbsp milk · 150 g brown sugar · 100 g white sugar · 2 pcs eggs · 1 tbsp vanilla sugar · 300 g plain flour · 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda · ½ tsp salt · 200 g dark chocolate
Eight per tray, well spacedBake briefly, cool on the tray
Bake 10–12 minutes, one tray at a time, on the middle shelf — with three batches (8 + 8 + 4) baking takes about 35 minutes in total. Take them out when the edges are golden and set and the centre still looks raw and wobbles slightly. Leave on the tray 10 minutes: they finish in their own heat. Then move to a rack.
TipA cookie baked until the centre looks done is hard once cool. All the softness comes from those ten minutes on the hot tray outside the oven.
Edges golden, centre still raw-looking
Before you start
Dough in the freezer
Freeze the shaped balls on a tray, then bag them. Bake from frozen, 2 minutes longer: fresh cookies in a quarter of an hour whenever the mood strikes.
With nuts
100 g walnuts or pecans toasted 8 minutes at 180 °C and chopped, folded in with the chocolate. The classic American pairing.
They spread into one flat sheet
Dough too warm or too little flour. Keep it in the fridge until the last moment, weigh the flour, and never put balls onto a hot tray from the previous batch.
