I Made the Internet-Famous “Ripple Cookie” & Here’s How It Went

In a recent piece in the New York Times, Julia Moskin writes about the internet-famous “ripple cookie.” According to Moskin, this cookie is crisp on the outside, soft and chewy on the inside, and “ringed, like a tree trunk — as if a chunk of chocolate had been dropped in the center and somehow made waves out to the edges.”

I mean, who could resist the lure of crispy-chewy perfection? Of course we had to try it.

The dough has the same ingredients as classic Toll House cookies, but in slightly different proportions: It has 1/4 cup less flour, 1/2 teaspoon less baking soda, 1 less egg, and 1/4 cup more sugar. Most of the sugar is granulated, instead of the usual 50-50 ratio of brown sugar to white, and the recipe also calls for the addition of 2 tablespoons water.

The result was a light-colored dough that was very soft in texture. In fact, it was so soft that I gave the dough an hour-long cool-down just to be safe.

I followed the instructions, making giant 3 1/2-ounce portions (that fit just four to a cookie sheet), chilling it down (again) in the freezer for 15 minutes, and then put them in the oven.

Here is where things get a bit tricky.

It’s all about the “pan bang,” says recipe creator, Sarah Kieffer. Once the cookies start to puff in the oven, you bang the sheet pan on the oven rack to deflate them, then let them puff again for a few minutes and bang again, and then do it again a few minutes later.

Fun fact: The “pan-bang” technique isn’t new at all. It dates at least to the 1980s and the The New Basics Cookbook, and quite possibly earlier.

The resulting cookies looked sort of how they were supposed to, but they melded into two giant masses instead of four.

For the next batch I divided the dough into more manageable 2-ounce portions, and these baked up far better. (I also tried different batches with convection and non-convection, just to see if it made a difference. It didn’t.)

Overall the cookies turned out, as promised, thin and crispy with a chewy center — as if a lace cookie and a Toll House cookie had a baby. They were also very sweet. In my opinion they were a little too thin and a little too sweet.

But my husband’s take? “You’re wrong. I love these.”

We weren’t alone in our opinions, judging by the comments on the article; ome people adored them, and some didn’t. Me, I’m still on the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

Have you tried the “ripple cookie”? Love it or hate it? Share with us in the comments!