Guest post: Making those cookies from the New York Times

So, a recipe whose primary feature is waiting for 36 hours posed a few problems for me at first. Here is a list of some of them:

1. You have to wait!
2. You can't make them in the middle of the week (well, you can't bake them in the middle of the week).
3. You have to wait!
4. Also, chocolate discs? No.

It says you can store the dough up to 72 hours, which would fix problem 2, but only makes problems 1 and 3 a bit worse!

Still, I had recently made some cookies with the 'old reliable' recipe on the bag of chips, and they were NOT good. For some reason, the recipe had been changed, REMOVING THE SALT. And they were pretty terrible. As this new recipe insists, salt is key. I concur.

So, basically I was in the chocolate chip cookie desert when this recipe oasis appeared, and I had to check it out! What if it solved all of my problems? What if I gained a new solid move that yields one of my favourite things?



Making a half recipe, which I did, involved a few 1/8 teaspoons and things like that, but I think my math is solid because THESE COOKIES ARE SOOOOOOOOOOOOO DELICIOUS.

I did deviate from the recipe a bit. It calls for a hilarious amount of chocolate discs. I used nice chips (Ghiardelli milk chocolate), but no discs in sight. I think I might have used half of the called-for amount. I also made these a bit smaller than I think the recipe calls for. Five inch cookies seemed a bit too big to me.



This being said, I didn't deviate with the two types of flour as many have in their experiments, since cake flour does have a magical ability to make things delicate. Also, the salt really is great. It's fun to sprinkle on top before you bake, and if you miss a bit it just goes on the parchment paper and gets baked into the bottom of the cookie, which to me is a great feature.

They are delicious warm, and I made small batches right away, at 24 hours, and at 36 hours. I haven't eaten one cold, or even cool, but I'm sure they are good too.

I have to say, the second and third batches were better, in that they did seem to have that toffee-ish thing they claim the rest time provides. The only real difference between these two later batches was that I baked the second batch a little less, ie, they weren't (the tiniest bit) burnt. A good feature for sure.

Make these. They are worth it. And if you can't wait, Michael says that the dough is a cut above as well.