The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever! Part 2

I awoke this morning to the very exciting news that the 36 hour countdown was officially over. I have managed to busy myself with planning what I am cooking for Father’s Day dinner but in between I have been unable to resist checking on the dough. Is anything happening (getting a little darker in colour I think?). Anyway I take the dough out of the fridge and it’s very very hard. Which is not a surprise I guess, having sat in the fridge for so long.

And here is my dilemma! It’s Saturday morning and there is absolutely no time to wait for the dough to soften. We have the usual Saturday morning activities to get to – drama classes, kids sporting events, last minute Father’s Day shopping ( only last minute I might add as it has seriously taken me all week to find a store in Melbourne that sells the hydration belt my marathon running husband will love!) So I really do not have the time to make these cookies now but I am desperate to see a result. These are supposed to be the best cookies ever – I really need to taste them.

Okay so I manage to scrape enough dough together to make four cookies. And as it turns out, doing this test is a good idea as the recipe says to roll them into the size of a golf balls which I have to say is much bigger than I would normally make cookies. I have to confess here and now, I am not a fan of big food. You know – big cookies, big muffins, big coffee. I don’t like it – I shouldn’t need two hands to hold a muffin, my coffee shouldn't take so long to drink it's cold by the time I'm finished and it shouldn’t take me 15 minutes to get through a cookie. But hey that’s just me. My cookies are usually a heaped tablespoon rolled into a ball. I end up doing about a tablespoon and a half, a nice compromise I do believe and into the oven the four cookies go!

I love the smell of something baking and I cannot believe the smell that is coming out of the kitchen. It smells so amazing and I am seriously getting excited. Anything that smells that good must taste amazing. Right? After about 15 minutes, they are golden brown but still a litttle soft. I take them out of the oven and wait the obligatory 10 minutes to make sure I won’t burn my mouth on the chocolate. They are seriously beautiful; everything the recipe said they would be. The flavour is amazing, very rich but not sickly and I cannot believe I have made something that tastes that good. It’s exciting no doubt about it – yes, yes getting a little carried away over a cookie. But remember I have used the same recipe for years and to finally find one I consider to be better – very cool. With only four on offer, I have one, my daughter has one and my son has one – I think his thoughts summed it all up rather nicely – their crunchy, their soft, its all good Mum!

The rest of the cookies were baked that afternoon. I made 48 all up and have frozen the rest of the dough, whhich is probably enough for another dozen. So you do get a lot which is good. Would I go to the trouble of making them every week? You know, if I had more time and was completely oblivious to the amount of butter and sugar involved, absolutely. There is no doubt they are something special. And that is the great thing about discovering a new recipe, once you know it, you can put it away and bring it out when you really want to impress. Or next week, whichever comes first!

Okay so if you to would like to take the 36 hour test, just click here to see the original recipe. I replaced the flours mentioned with plain flour and I am glad in the end I used normal chocolate chips, there is a lot in this recipe and as the flavour does develop a lot I think that if darker, richer chocolate had been used it may just have been too much, if that’s possible. I did sprinkle them with the sea salt as instructed and it adds a nice contrast to the sweetness of the chocolate. I also baked them at 160 degrees as they were browning a little quickly.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie Ever! Part 1

Firstly, I need to say sorry. I know I said I would talk about my latest cookbook purchase - The Bourke St Bakery cookbook and I will, I promise but not today. I have been distracted by an interesting recipe I found while surfing around just looking at other food blogs. Somehow I managed to come across this recipe for what is supposed to be the recipe for the best chocolate chip cookie ever. Now that's a big call I know but it certainly grabs your attention. The recipe was published in the NY Times by David Leite. While I was reading the story behind its creation what really got my attention was the fact you have to let the dough sit for 36 hours.

Yes I know - that's a long time to wait for something and would waiting that long really make much difference? There are lots of stories out there of people who have made it and how sensational they are. So it certainly got me thinking. I have used the same recipe for chocolate chip cookies for so long now I don't even remember where it came from. When I have a recipe that absolutely works every single time regardless of the effort or attention put in then I hand write it onto a recipe card and it gets filed away in my classic collection. This is not to say I haven' tried others, I have but they never measure up to the one I use every single week to make perfect cookies.

I digress! So I thought ok I have to give this a go and see what happens. So the recipe is pretty standard, except for the flours used which were Cake and Bread flours. Which I didn't have nor could I find so I just used plain flour and it says to use 60% cocoa disks which I also didn't have on hand so I just used the Cadbury chocolate chips I use nearly every time (sometimes I splash out and my local cafe sells me the Belgian chips they use in their hot chocolate - sensational!). Anyway you cream the butter and sugars, add the eggs and vanilla, and mix until light and fluffy. So far so good.

Then you add the dry ingredients and mix in the chocolate chips. Then you have to cover the dough with plastic wrap and it says make sure the wrap is touching the dough and leave for 36 hours in the refrigerator. And now we wait and count down the hours!

My Very 1st Post!

Most cookbooks in one way or another are irresistible to me. I have bought them for no reason at all most of my life. When I say no reason at all I mean I bought them even when I never cooked (early twenties) and then got rid of a lot that I thought I would never use (early thirties), don't ask if there were any classics amongst them as I am sure there was. So here I am now (early forties) with a beautiful collection of cookbooks that continues to grow and is now being used all the time.

So now, they are even more exciting to me as instead of buying them, looking at all the beautiful pictures and then putting them on the shelf they are actually being used to create some beautiful food. My kids are teenagers now with appetites and a willingness to try new things. So I try at least a couple of times a week to cook something from one of my cookbooks or magazines (yes food magazines are a weakness as well).

So I thought I would write about what I cooked, how it worked out (or didn't in some cases) and just write in general about all my cookbooks. I bought a new one on the weekend - 'The Bourke Street Bakery Cookbook' so will have something from that later this week.