apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

they were good. salt is becoming a must on my baked goods. i thought it was an excellent recipe, but the jury's still on the fridge treatment and the comparisons, because i didn't make any control batches.

www.breadbabies.blogspot.com

The salt was what was commented on, every time.

The 36-hour wait wasn't a problem for me; it splits up the process into more manageable chunks, anyway. I think I'll continue it as long as I don't need the cookies for an event right away.

I won't be a stickler for the feves, because they're too difficult to get around here and too expensive to get shipped, though I'd go all out for a special occasion.

If I'm making them for just my family, though, the one thing I won't stick to (at least after that bag of bread flour is gone) is the two kinds of flour. I don't usually bake with white flour anyway; I'm going to try the recipe with spelt flour and see if the 36-hour wait and the salt and the large cookie size are enough to raise it above the usual Toll House fare.

Overall, the three times I've made them, the cookies got rave reviews from whoever ate them, whether those eating were related to me or not.

Oh, and the best part about the whole thing is that it's great conversation fodder.

My first batch I made a few weeks ago, with AP and bread flour. I baked them after 60 hours and after 72 hours, and the 72 hour batch were great. But I hadn't used dark enough chips, and I missed the nuts I usually put in cookies.

So I made another batch yesterday with Ghiradelli 60% chips, toasted pecans, and a mixture of bread flour and pastry flour (whole wheat). I baked 2 last night and was much happier even without the resting period. The chips and pecans made a big difference already, and the whole wheat flour added an extra hint of nuttiness. The cookies were nice and crispy around the edges, but hadn't developed those strong caramel notes. Can't wait to bake a few more in a few days!

Oh, and I still do want to try the feves. :)

Joan, I'm sure spelt flour will be great! I know that spelt flour likes a little time to absorb liquid anyway (the King Arthur FLour Whole Grain cookbook has lots of great spelt flour tips), so I'm sure it'll work really well in these cookies!

Agreed, these will be my new standard - they were amazing! I made the same changes as the Kitchn did... using all-purpose flour and regular chocolate chips. I thought the best part was that the batter was kept in the fridge, so I could bake off smaller batches over the course of a couple days, and have warm cookies in not-too-huge quantities.

Did anyone try freezing it?

thesamanthafiles--thanks for the tip. I'll check out that cookbook.

I tried the recipe soon after the story was printed, enticed by Rubin's description: “First there’s the crunchy outside inch or so ... Then there’s the center, which is soft.” A local sandwich cart sells these cookies--crispy on the very edges, getting chewier and softer toward the middle. They're perfectly flat, as if they were made with a lot of fat, but not crispy thin. That's what I was hoping for. I got tasty cookies out of this recipe, but the texture wasn't quite what I'd hoped. Also, I've seen a lot of bloggers write about this recipe, and the cookies often seem to look different from one blogger to another. The batch I made looked more like the photo above, but I've seen some look flat, like what I'd wanted.

I'll also vouche for the King Arthur's chocolate chip cookie recipe as being great as printed--I'm going to try the 36-hour rest on it, too.

I actually took the tips of the cold rest and the dark chocolate chips and just applied them to my standard recipe, the almost-mrs.fields cookies. Since everyone is always blown away by that recipe anyways, I was hesitant to try what would be a more mundane option (I couldn't find fevres at my Whole Foods, I was not going to go for the multiple flours). If you aren't familiar, almost-mrs.fields have a little more than half of the flour being replaced by quick oats (I usually grind mine to a coarse flour) and about a third of the chocolate is chopped up pieces of chocolate bar. I think the chocolate bar peices gives some of the layers that the fevres were purported to create.
The high cacao content chips (62% ghiradellis) were great and I think the time in the refrigerator helped a lot too. I agree with the earlier commenter that it helped break up the labor, especially given the 7 dozen yield of my recipe.

Did anyone else try the refrigeration with their stand-by recipe and compare that?

I made them last week and the recipe produces a far better cookie. This will be the only chocolate chip cookies I make from now on.

I have made the recipe twice and the second batch was even better than the first. Most tasters raved that it was the best chocolate chip cookie ever, blah blah blah. The one and only dissenter said she much preferred chocolate chip cookies with semi-sweet chips.

I couldn't disagree more. After having these, I don't see how I could go back to making ordinary cookies, they pale in comparison. Not only that, but these stayed fresh-tasting for five days! I baked them Friday and they were still good on Wednesday.

My next test will be baking the frozen dough which awaits me in my freezer. I froze it in balls and plan to place it in fridge the night before and bake in the morning.

If you haven't seen it before, my interpretation of these wonderful cookies:
http://www.izzyeats.com/2008/07/it-chocolate-chip-cookie-500-calorie.html

I'm a partial convert--while I'll definitely incorporate the 36-hour rest into my cookie baking in the future, and think that the recipe results in a really good basic chocolate chip cookie, I'm unwilling to fuss with multiple flours and feves.

I don't know how izzy's mama made them last 5 days... I'm lucky if they last 3..

I made the NY Times cookies and was very pleased with them! They were taste tested by my chocolate chip cookie fanatic husband and his many coworkers and got fantastic responses. I'm not really a chocolate chip cookie person - I prefer oatmeal raisin - and even I loved them. They were well worth the 36 hours of taking up space in my fridge and I'll be making them again soon! One thing I do want is to do a side-by-side comparison with Dorie Greenspan's chocolate chip cookie recipe...