New York Times Chocolate Chips Cookies {from Jacques Torres} – These cookies are unique in that both bread flour and cake flour are used in the dough; the bread flour gives incredible chewiness and the cake flour keeps them light.
I’ve been wanting to make the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies since 2008 and finally got around to it. Better late than never.
The Times recipe is adapted from Jacques Torres and some people refer to these cookies as ‘The Jacques Torres Recipe’ instead of the New York Times Recipe. Whatever title it’s given, the recipe has been discussed, dissected, and now I’m tossing my thoughts into the ring, too.
The recipe is full of nuances and uniquities, making it unlike any other chocolate chip cookie recipe I’ve tried. The full recipe yields 18 five-inch diameter cookies that use a whopping 3.5 ounces of raw dough each. That’s two to three times the size of most homemade cookies and puts these squarely into the jumbo-bakery-sized cookie realm. We didn’t need 18 whoppers all at once, fearing they would go stale before we’d eat them all, and so I halved the recipe, yielding nine jumbo cookies and one slightly smaller cookie. You could likely make the full batch of dough and either freeze the pre-baked balls of dough or freeze the finished cookies. I’m sure either freeze similarly well to other doughs or finished cookies if you prefer to make the full batch.
Halving the recipe was a good choice because the cookies are great on baking day as expected, but by the second day they were so-so, and what lingered into the third day was not my kind of cookie. They were hard, dry, and a bit crumbly. Some people expect that cookies just don’t hold up into the second and third day, but I am used to the Cooks Illustrated Thick And Chewy Recipe and various deviations I’ve created with it over the years. Those cookies do stay soft for days, thanks to a higher ratio of brown to granulated sugar. Because brown sugar absorbs atmospheric moisture, the cookies, paradoxically, get softer rather than dry out, as time passes.
The NYT recipe is unique in that it calls for two types of flour, bread flour and cake flour. Bread flour has a higher protein level than other flour, about 12.7% protein, which is a couple points higher than all-purpose flour, which is usually in the 1o- to 11.7-percent range, depending on the brand. The higher the protein level, the more gluten that’s present, the stronger the rise, and also the chewier the resulting item. Bread flour creates chewiness in bread, and as I’ve discovered it does the same for cookies and I loved the resulting extra chewy effect.
Cake flour is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Soft, downy, light, and airy. It’s what angel food cakes and tender-crumbed birthday cakes are made from and although it’s great in cake, it’s typically not used for cookies because it’s too soft and cookies baked with it won’t have good structure. However, because it’s paired in conjunction with the big strongman known as bread flour, the two balance each other.
The downside of using cake flour is that it has a powerful aroma and smells strongly of a box of cake mix. I love the scent of cake mix, and the smell of birthday cake or Funfetti cake, but not inside my chocolate chip cookies. I have a very keen sense of smell and with every bite of chocolate chip cookie, it felt like I was simultaneously eating a white graduation party sheetcake or birthday cake and I did not care for this.
An additional consideration is that the average person may not keep both bread and cake flour on hand. I do, so not a biggie for me, but a consideration nonetheless if you have to purchase two bags of flour just to make cookies. However, buy the bread flour anyway because I have lots of bread recipes coming and you’ll need it.
The next consideration is that using a digital food scale is nearly mandatory for these cookies. Many grocery stores sell them in the baking supplies aisle near the flour and sugar and if you order online, you can find deals. I use the EatSmart Precision Pro Digital Kitchen Scale in red. It’s $25, I’ve had it for years,it’s not super fancy, but it gets the job done. I don’t bake by weight as much as smart people in other countries tend to do, but when I do, I’m reminded that I need to do it more often because it makes things so much easier, faster, and more accurate.
For example, bread flour is heavy and dense, and cake flour is light and airy. If measuring by volume in traditional measuring cups, ‘1 cup flour’ can be an inconsistent measurement, whereas measuring by weight on a scale is absolute. The scale also made halving the recipe a breeze. Halving numbers in ounces is much easier than trying to halve fractions and when I have cookie dough on the brain, I’d rather not try to halve fractions in my head with my stand mixer whipping and flour flying.
Additionally, there is no way I could have accurately guessed what a 3.5-ounce mound of dough looked like without using a scale. It’s much more dough than I would have guesstimated, and without a scale, I would have grossly under-estimated it.
The next nuance is that the dough must be chilled for at least 24 to 36 hours before baking. If you are in a must-have-cookies-now mood, these are not the cookies for you as they do require at least a day’s worth of advance planning. The chilled dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours. In general, chilling cookie dough not only results in cookies that spread less when baked and that stay puffier, but in the case of these cookies, it’s been suggested this waiting period allows the flavors and flours to meld. Since I always chill my dough before baking cookies, sometimes up to four days beforehand, the chilling and waiting period was nothing out of the ordinary for me.
I actually find it easier to make cookie dough one day, store dough balls in the fridge in a little container, and bake them just before I want fresh and hot cookies. Sometimes I bake two balls of dough at a time because nothing beast a just-baked cookie. If within four days or so I haven’t baked off the dough, I toss it into a labeled ziplock and freeze it. When you’re ready to bake the frozen dough, you don’t even need to thaw it and I find baking for an additional minute or two is all that’s necessary.
The recipe also calls for specialty chocolate; chocolate disks which are sold at Jacques Torres Chocolate, and Valrhona fèves, which are oval-shaped chocolate pieces, sold at Whole Foods. I cannot afford to use high end chocolate in cookies, especially in ones I wasn’t sure I’d love. Instead I used my trusty Trader Joe’s semi-sweet chocolate chips and they were more than fine. Whatever kind of chocolate you use, you’ll need lots of it. Halving the recipe required 10 ounces of chocolate and so for a yield of nine cookies in the half batch, that’s over one ounce of chocolate per cookie. A standard bag of chocolate chips usually has ten to twelve ounces of chips in it; so for nine cookies, essentially a whole bag of chocolate chips is needed.
When mixing the chips into the dough, it almost felt like the dough couldn’t possibly hold one more chip and I learned by making this recipe that I can stuff more chocolate into other cookie doughs I make; it will all magically hold somehow. I loved that the cookies were bursting with chocolate chips and were intensely chocolaty. The one ounce-plus of chocolate per cookie is like eating a little chocolate candy bar baked within a cookie. Rich much?
When it came time to bake, almost two full days after mixing the dough, 44 hours to be exact, I weighed the dough balls to ensure I was doing everything as prescribed, down to the tenth-of-an-ounce.
The dough for one NYT cookie is like three of my normal cookies rolled into one massive hunk. Below are three one-ounce mounds that I smooshed together to create one bowling ball of dough. Well, baseball at least. The theoretical advantage to baking cookies this big is that the edges should bake up chewy, while the centers should stay soft. In reality, this theory did not work well with these cookies so I was very skeptical that the baseballs would give me the chewy-yet-soft results I wanted, but they delivered.
I learned something very valuable by making this recipe and if for no other reason than this discovery, I am glad I made these cookies. Since making the NYT cookies, I’ve tried making other types of cookies using two to 2.25-ounces of dough and realize I like them better than my typical one- to 1.25-ounce cookies. Sometimes bigger is better, to a point. I like cookies in the two-ounce range or slightly over, but 3.5 is just too big for a snack for me and is more like a meal, via one cookie.
I did not sprinkle sea salt on them before baking, a personal choice in the interest of taste-testing comparison. I wanted ‘classic’ chocolate chip cookies like I grew up with and since my mom and Grandma never baked cookies with sea salt, I omitted it here.
The recipe indicates to bake the cookies for 18 to 20 minutes at 350F. Because they’re huge, they need more time to bake than typical cookies. I baked the cookies one tray at a time because I have one ‘perfect’ rack in my oven and took no chances with these 44-hours-in-the-making bundles of joy. I baked the first batch of six cookies for 18 minutes and the second batch of four cookies for 16 1/2 minutes. I strongly preferred the 16 1/2-minute cookies and in my oven, baking for 20 minutes according to the recipe, would have ruined them. At 18 minutes, the edges were browned and the tops were on the glossy side; at 16.5 minutes the edges were slightly less browned and the tops were glossier, but still set. I allowed the cookies to cool on the baking tray for 10 minutes, then I placed them on a wire rack. They firmed up very dramatically during the ten minutes and by the time I transferred them to the rack, they had essentially finished cooling.
In any recipe, I tend to use the lower end of listed ranges and treat them as guidelines, not absolutes. Let common sense and your personal taste preferences be your guides when you deem something done. I frequently calibrate and test my oven temperature, and know that it’s functioning up to par. However, I believe baking times in many recipes are too lengthy to create soft and chewy cookies. I prefer Mrs. Field’s style cookies, very ooey and gooey, and overbaking is not the way to my heart. With most any cookie recipe, if you wait to pull them from the oven until they look done, most of the time as they cool, they will set up firmer and crispier than ultimately desired. These were just on the edge of that cliff and in my oven, 16 1/2 minutes (below) would be the max for future batches.
I wanted to love-love-love these cookies and wanted them to be the last cookie recipe I ever needed. I wanted to give them an A+ and if I was going by looks alone, they look exactly like a cookie ‘should’ look to me, and for appearance they get an A+. But we all know life, and cookies, is about more than just looks.
On baking day, for taste, I give them an A+. Fresh and hot out of the oven, they were simply stunning. Then again, most cookies are. In terms of texture, they center is tender and the edges are very chewy. If you like a chewy, sturdy, firm cookie that you really have to use your jaw to cut through, you will love these. They are the opposite of these, which melt in your mouth. There is nothing soft and airy about them, thanks in large part to the bread flour.
My major complaint is that the cookies didn’t age well and by the second and third day they became far too dry, hard, and crumbly for my preference. Especially considering the NYT cookies are so big, and because no one can realistically pound down an entire batch on the first day (holiday parties and feeding football teams not withstanding), I expect the leftovers to hold up for at least 48 to 72 hours. This lack of shelf life is was disappointing and the Cooks Illustrated recipe wins by a long shot here.
The other major issue is that the taste of the cake flour was unpleasantly discernible. I love cake and I love cookies, but not a cake within a cookie when I just want a good, classic, chocolate chip cookie. I do have a sensitive palate and keen sense of taste and smell, and I think things like this may be magnified for me, but even Scott who isn’t a supertaster and normally doesn’t know his zucchini flecks from his chocolate chips, asked me why the cookies smelled and tasted a little bit like birthday cake. Ahem.
Overall, the cookies fall in the B+ to A- range for me. I recommend trying them because you may absolutely love them as millions do and they may become your A+ never-need-another-recipe chocolate chip cookie recipe. Don’t be dissuaded by the two flours, the extended chilling time, or any trepidations in my review. I am simply being very cautious about proclaiming them as the ‘best cookies ever’ because as a food blogger who bakes hundreds of batches of cookies every year, I am judicious and on the tentative side when handing out those solid A ratings. I don’t want every single cookie I make to be ‘the best cookie ever that will change your life’ as I see happen so frequently on blogs.
And on baking day, these were the best and who cares if it was short-lived. That means you’ll just have to eat your way through a batch of these cookies, quickly. There are far worse things.
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New York Times Chocolate Chips Cookies {from Jacques Torres}
Ingredients
- 2 cups minus 2 tablespoons, 8 1/2 ounces cake flour
- 1 ⅔ cups 8 1/2 ounces bread flour
- 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder
- 1 ¼ teaspoons baking soda
- 1 ½ teaspoons coarse salt
- 2 ½ sticks, 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter
- 1 ¼ cups 10 ounces light brown sugar
- 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons, 8 ounces granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 ¼ pounds bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content (chocolate disks available from Jacques Torres
- sea salt, for sprinkling over cookie dough prior to baking
Instructions
- Sift flours, baking powder, baking soda, 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt into a large bowl; set aside.
- Using a mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds (I did about 20 to 30 seconds). Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough (or place dough in an airtight container) and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours (I baked mine just shy of two days later, at 44 hours)
- When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350F degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat; set aside.
- Scoop six 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes. (I baked first batch of 6 cookies for 18 minutes, and baked second batch of 4 cookies for 16 1/2 minutes; I prefer the 16 1/2 minute cookies). Transfer baking mat or parchment paper to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more. Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day. Eat warm, with a big napkin.
- Recipe from the New York Times, adapted from Jacques Torres
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Have you ever tried the New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe? Are you tempted to try it?
What’s your favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies?
If you have a favorite recipe for chocolate chip cookies, please link it up and tell me why you love it so much. I want to find those buried gems.
My favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe to date is the Cooks Illustrated Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe (with photo tutorial) on their site. Ironically, I have never blogged about that recipe. These are the closest.
Until very recently, I didn’t realize there are actually two Cooks Illustrated Chocolate Chip Cookie recipes; the Thick and Chewy, and their newer Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. That recipe differs from the Thick and Chewy in that browned butter is used, slightly less overall sugar is used while maintaining a higher brown to granulated sugar ratio, and slightly less flour is used, creating a slightly smaller batch size.
What I enjoy about the Cooks Illustrated recipes are that the butter is melted rather than creamed and so theoretically I don’t have to dirty my mixer to mix the ingredients. However, if I have time, I do get better results when I cream, rather than melt, the butter. And although their recipes don’t call specifically for chilling the dough in advance, I always do; it’s habit and I get better results. The cookies are just the right thickness, the edges are chewy and the centers stay soft. Making them also feels more fun, with less scientific precision required.
However, I have recently been testing some other chocolate chip cookie recipes, and creating some other dough hybrids, and the more cookies I make, the less certain I am of my favorites anymore.
I’ve heard of these cookies, but have never made them– my mom’s cookie recipe is the best :)
oh my gosh. i wish i could reach through the screen and eat one of those chocolate chip cookies.
Wow, Averie. Thank you for such incredible detail and thought put into this post. You obviously took a lot of time. Thanks!
Those cookies look GORGEOUS! I want to eat one so badly right now. I have cake flour and bread flour, but do I have the patience to make these??! Your photos make me want to try! Who can resist giant, soft chocolate chip cookies??!! YUM!!:-)
Thanks for the sweet comment and yes, took me more than a few minutes to assemble this post :)
I just tried making the NY Times cookies too after having them on my must-try list for what seemed to be the longest time. After combing through different sites and reading others’ experiences, I decided to portion out 2 oz dough balls. This allowed for cookies that were bigger than your average CCC yet not overwhelming in size, and still achieved that sought after crisp perimeter and soft, chewy interior. I really enjoyed the cookies and think the sea salt and bittersweet chocolate combo is key, so perhaps you can try again using those components? I also kept mine in a tupperware and 3 days later, they were still chewy!
I’m going to try the Cook’s Illustrated CCC recipe you recommended next…who knows, maybe I’ll end up enjoying those more! “Thick and chewy” sounds great to me :)
I did put them in a little tupperware but it’s so dry here in San Diego, like bone dry, that contributed to the problem, I’m sure of them drying out even wrapped in plasticwrap inside a tupperware.
Good to know you had success with the 2 oz portions!
I love your explanation of the cookies. that’s a lot of work for a cookie – but they look amazing!
I may have to try your thin mints!
It was a ton of work, but it was a life’s bucket list recipe that I can now check off my list. For as complicated as these were, the Thin Mints are the polar opposite – so easy! Hope you try them!
My word, you sure did get science-y about cookies. I liked it.
I’ve tried this and thought they were okay. I still haven’t found a recipe to beat out my favorite CCC, but that doesn’t stop me from looking.
If I was going to make these things, by golly, I was going to get all science-ey…otherwise, it would have felt a little unfounded or not well-researched. Did I mention that I adore Alton Brown? :)
And now I need to go stalk your site or ask you what your fave CCC recipe is?
Right here: bunsinmyoven.com/2010/12/01/my-favorite-chocolate-chip-cookies/ :)
We love Alton Brown here too. My son is an especially big fan.
Your chocolate, peanut butter, oatmeal cookies have become my new favorite. I don’t even need to try anything else right now! :o)
Aww, thank you! So glad you love them! They’re a fave of mine, that’s for sure!
I made these cookies once, after seeing them on The Chew. I must have not noticed the refrigerate for 24 hours part, because I baked them right away. I couldn’t find the feves, but I used some 56% cacao chips that were a bit larger than usual (the chocolate did seem to be in layers). I absolutely LOVED these cookies, esp. the sea salt on the top. I highly recommend the sea salt – it was such an unexpected taste with the sweetness. I will definitely make these again, just not sure when. Eighteen cookies is not enough for me!
I’ve got to get on this gravy train…these are always such beautiful cookies–thank you for the delicious reminder =)
These look great, a fun take on the recipe and fun pictures. I’m terrible at baking cookies, I usually burn the edges and/or they’re too mush inside. So it was nice reading your thoughts on the process.
It seems everyone is making this recipe lately. You have a very different take on it; it’s refreshing to see someone think differently about such a popular cookie. I love giant cookies and almost always find cookies need less baking time than called for, making me certain these recipes just aren’t tested enough. I have and like my food scale, but only make recipes that require it when I’m extra ambitious.
It’s a peeve of mine to say every.single.thing is ‘amazing’. They are very good, I mean, yes, look at the pics – not exactly bad :) But are the last cookie recipe I will ever trial b/c they are THAT perfect? No. As bloggers we have high standards and are always searching for both perfection and novelty I think. And yes, baking times listed usually would burn or dry food out horribly! I want Mrs Fields kind of cookies!
I made these quite some time ago. I failed to make them the giant size, so I only found them so-so, but I’ve heard that the size is a major factor in how well these turn out. I loved reading your thoughts on them. I actually don’t like cake flour, but don’t remember being able to taste it in these, but then again, it was some time ago that I made them!!
As I told another friend, the ratio of surface area and mass of dough to how that all bakes up, or lack thereof in the centers, while edges get chewy is key so you can’t skimp on dough size BUT…I learned the hard way from another famous cookbook that that ‘theory’ doesn’t always hold; sometimes a dough ball that big is destined to do one thing: spread like a pancake! And cake flour – something about it & cookies – do.not.go.together for me!
I’ve made them and I wasn’t too impressed.
Love your honesty, as always!
Very informative Averie. I have not tried these cookies yet, but have seen them everywhere. I don’t know if I can wait a day or 2 to bake them.
Great review and pictures. I made these cookies twice and I didn’t think they were the best cookies. I made some with the salt and some without. I know salting cookies is very IN right now, but I can’t decide if I really like it. I do need to invest in a scale, so maybe that would help my end result. I have also made the CI version (but not the new one with the brown butter) the version you discuss was my “go-to” recipe for a while. I have also tried CCC recipes with pudding in them…didn’t like them and the cornstarch – didn’t think they were great. Have yet to try the Alton Brown CCC recipe which I have read is very good. That’s the next one for me to try. I have been using dark chocolate chips and really like the flavor they add to the cookies.
I love your feedback! “I know salting cookies is very IN right now, but I can’t decide if I really like it.” — I am extremely salt-sensitive and my husband can’t have much salt – so really, the less salt I add to things, the better. The exception is doing a salty ‘n sweet twist, i.e. pretzles dipped in chocolate, or even potato chips in cookies I’ve tried; but really, I am all about the classics these days and trying to get back to some things my grandma would recognize :)
As for the CI recipe, the one you mean is called the Thick and Chewy, the new browned one they call The Perfect. I havent tried it, only the classic/thick n chewy and it was my fave. I have tried pudding cookies but that’s not a good old fashioned cookie to me – it has too much ‘help’. I dunno…
Then the cornstarch cookies – made a batch of that dough…today! But havent baked them yet. And the Alton Brown Chewy, I have wanted to try it!
I must have given my cookies away (or enjoyed them all by myself!) the last time I made this recipe because I don’t think I had any leftover by day two. :D What I do remember is my KA stand mixer dancing around the counter and shaking so much that I though she’d throw her gears and gadgets across the kitchen. And I remember how great these cookies were straight from the oven! *purr* Thanks for the analysis…you are so right about cake flour having that “boxy” scent! When I bake with it, I kind of lose my appetite for a while (that’s rare!). :P
I totally lost my appetite for sweets after baking with it for a few days and that is…unheard of for me! lol There is something about it, meh, I did not like. I hadnt baked a cake with it in years and now I wonder if I’ll ever use it again…not sure. I can only imagine that your KA was dancing! I have the newest, biggest, HUGE KA, the biggest one they make now, and at even a half batch my mixer was pretty darn full! Thanks for the Pin my friend :)