Chocolate Chip Cookies : Hershey’s Milk Chocolate

It’s finally happened. I caved and made cookies. First time, so I figured I’d document the whole thing with some pics and some notes. It’s been so long since I baked anything and the summer heat is approaching fast, so might as well get some baking done before the sun takes care of baking the northern hemisphere for the next few months.

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One of the reasons I decided to make cookies is because chefsteps.com posted a cookie recipe and that got me excited (more like curious, I’m not crazy about cookies, I find them a bit boring to be honest) Anyways,  if you don’t know who these chefsteps guys are, and you love technical cooking, beautiful plating and geeking out about food science and food photography, chefsteps is definitely the place. Let’s make some cookies now. Warning: the chronological order of the photos makes no sense. 

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 Ingredients (makes about 20 cookies):

220g Unsalted Butter (softened)
200g Brown sugar
180g Granulated Sugar
15g Kosher salt
5g Baking soda
20g Pure vanilla extract
100g Eggs, about 2 whole
400g Pastry flour
300g Milk chocolate, 40%, chopped
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1. Get the ingredients ready before starting anything else. I measured everything. Chopped the chocolate bars and had cleaned and organized my kitchen. The stand mixer was ready to go.

2. Cream, butter, sugars, salt and baking soda. A couple of minutes at medium speed, stop. Scrape the sides of the bowl and then continue for another minute or 2 at a higher speed. The result should be fluffy, and have a whipped texture (I’m literally paraphrasing the chefsteps guys here). Note: I didn’t have brown sugar, or more like my brown sugar had crystalized and formed a solid sugar block that was literally indestructible, so I used the same weight in granulated sugar instead.

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3. Add the vanilla and the eggs. Pretty self explanatory. I would probably try beating the eggs prior to using them in this recipe next time. The recipe calls for adding the eggs really slowly. Also, Thomas Keller suggests straining the beaten eggs to remove the chalaza, but that’s getting extremely anal about it now 🙂 I love it.

4. Add the flour and the chocolate. Mix until well incorporated. Do not over mix though. Cookies might end up tough because gluten had a chance to develop. No good. The end consistency of the dough should be that of really cold ice cream, at least that’s what it reminded me of when I started scooping it out. Note: I used all purpose flour, and this is acceptable… obviously, it’s not like the flour police is gonna show up. I’d love to try the pastry flour one they when I find it at the store though.

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5. Rest the cookie dough. I transferred the stand mixer bowl to the fridge and it rested for a bit.  I didn’t wait a whole hour, but this is probably a good amount of time to let the flour in the dough hydrate completely before baking. During this time. I CLEANED THE KITCHEN. again.

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6. Prep your baking trays. Line them with parchment paper, or butter and a good flour dusting like I did. If you wanna get fancy, get those french silpat mattes at the store, they cost about a million dollars but so worth it. I used an ice-cream scoop do portion the cookie dough evenly, makes all the difference! I might have not made cookies ever but I’ve tried muffins and this is a really good way to ensure all the goodies are the same size.

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7. Bake at 350F for about 15 mins. This is where experience comes into play, experience which I have none in the art of making cookies. The cooking times will depend on many factors, specially the oven itself. Experimenting with different cooking times until you achieve the desired chewiness level.  At least that’s what I did. Every batch got a little better and in general the cookies were pretty good, a little crunchier than I would have liked but still delicious.
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And there you have it. The whole process takes about an hour form start to end. Not bad!
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15 comments

  1. Love that you made these!! And I adore your photos! How much longer did it add to the cook time taking pics of each step? Great recipe!!

    1. aww, thank you! 🙂 so glad to hear from you! The photos didn’t add that much time. I have an are on my counter which is rigged with strobes and diffusers, so I just have to place the food there and I take the pictures, is rather quick. What takes time is the editing afterwards, because I do take a lot of pics and the I have to go through all of them and select the ones I like and then, do a little editing, some cropping, adding the blog address on them, sometimes white balancing and some color correction but very minimal

  2. Oh my goodness! What a beautiful post. Your directions are so easy to follow and I can almost smell them with the clarity of your gorgeous photographs. I hope ours turn out this well!

        1. I don’t and I think that’s why my cookies often fail! And the fact that I don’t seem to refrigerator the dough long enough. :/ I’m still going to try to convert and follow your directions.

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