Chocolate Chip Cookies-Saveur

By CheeseDiva

Ingredients

• 2 1/4 cups flour
• 3/4 tsp. baking soda
• 3/4 tsp. kosher salt
• 16 tbsp. unsalted butter, softened
• 3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla extract
• 4 egg yolks
• 9 oz. bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped

Details

Servings 1
Adapted from saveur.com

Preparation

Step 1

1. Heat oven to 375°. Whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt in a bowl; set aside. Combine butter, both sugars, and vanilla in a large bowl; beat on medium-high speed with a hand mixer until smooth and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add yolks two at a time, beating after each addition; add dry ingredients; beat on low speed until just combined. Transfer dough to a work surface; divide into 3 equal pieces. Flatten each into a 4″ x 6″ rectangle; wrap in plastic wrap. Chill for 30 minutes.

2. Place one dough rectangle on a floured work surface; sprinkle with half the chocolate. Top with another rectangle, sprinkle with remaining chocolate, and cover with last rectangle. Using a floured rolling pin, flatten rectangles into a 9″ x 6″ x 1 ½″ rectangle. Using a 2″ round cutter, cut out cookies; transfer to parchment paper—lined baking sheets, spaced 3″ apart. Gather scraps, reroll into a 1 ½″-thick disk; cut out more cookies. Bake, rotating baking sheets halfway through cooking, until lightly browned and set, about 15 minutes.

How to Make Chewier Cookies

This had better be some sort of alchemy that can't be detected by simply reading the recipe, since it calls for exactly the same amount of ingredients as a standard choc chip cookie (more, actually, since it's all yolks) yet yields half as many cookies, takes a lot more time and effort, and many of the resultant cookies are just standard anyway - re-rolling the dough is the same as mixing. The comparison to laminated dough sounds absurd, and the description of the cookies sounds... like any good chocolate chip cookie.

There is, indeed, alchemy involved with this recipe-- the technique produces amazing cookies (reminiscent of the mentioned puff pastry). Though I had the same thought that re-rolling would turn them into regular cookies-- if done carefully, it actually results in more layers. The trick is to carefully place the scraps into a mass that preserves the layering (like the technique for making puff pastry). Towards the end, though, the dough does give way; the last few cookies are more traditional (but, as SCHOEBDOO noted, still great).

When I make these again (and I will), I'll be careful about letting the chocolate fall out onto the baking sheet (I had a bit of scorching from where the dough didn't spread) and I'll try to chop my chocolate a little more uniformly (so that it doesn't poke through the dough during the rolling).

Cutting into squares is a good suggestion, as it makes the job easier and eliminates the re-rolling of scraps which seems to be the point of making them in layers. I'll try the cutting next time. This time around, I rolled thinner and used a smaller cookie cutter - I just don't like big cookies - and even with the adjustments, these turned out fine (and still enormous I might add). Tasty, but not necessarily worth the extra work when you simply feel like a Toll House cookie.