National Chocolate Chip Day: Overnight chocolate chip cookies

May 15 is National Chocolate Chip Day. Celebrate by baking a batch of chewy chocolate chip cookies.

|
The Pastry Chef's Baking
For a cakey texture to your chocolate chip cookies, store the finished dough in the refrigerator overnight.

Previously, I had experimented with a chocolate chip cookie recipe and its chilling and freezing times. With that recipe, I chilled half the batter in the refrigerator overnight before baking and the other half I frozen immediately after making the dough then also baked it off the next day. With this recipe, I experimented with baking times. It does call for chilling overnight and I did that dutifully although once the 24-hour chilling period was over, I did hustle the dough balls into a freezer bag and put them in my freezer to wait for when I needed them. (Like for tomorrow because I'm meeting my friend, Chocolate Chip Cookie Todd, for lunch and I had to have chocolate chip cookies for his cookie bag.)

It's no secret I prefer underbaked chocolate chip cookies. They're chewy and just have a better texture to me. It's how I've always baked my cookies for years. But I thought I'd try baking until "done" to see if I was missing anything. I've captioned each cookie as to whether it was the fully baked or underbaked one. As you can tell, there's very little different between the two on the outside. That's likely due to the recipe itself – this is just how the cookies turn out on the outside.

On the inside is where the difference is the most obvious. With the properly underbaked one, you can see a more dense and moist texture. The outer edges look more fully baked and a little cakey but the middle is definitely more on the chewy side than the cakey end.

When baked until done, you can see the cakey texture of the inside of the cookie. This will also dry out sooner as the cookie ages and stales since it doesn't have as much moisture as the underbaked one. In terms of taste, they tasted similar since they're from the exact same dough after all. But since a cookie is about both the taste and the texture for me, the underbaked one proves I've been (under)baking chocolate chip cookies properly all this time. I simply prefer the moist, chewy texture of a good underbaked chocolate chip cookie. By the way, unlike with the other experiment where the chilled-overnight cookie tasted better than the freeze immediately cookie, I really couldn't tell a discernible difference in taste with these. They were just good chocolate chip cookies.

Overnight chocolate chip cookies
From Chocolate, Chocolate and More

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 eggs
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups chocolate chips

1. Cream butter in a large mixing bowl. Add sugars and mix for 5 minutes until creamy. Add in vanilla and eggs and mix well.

2. In a separate bowl, mix together flour, baking powder, and salt. Add flour mixture to butter mixture slowly, making sure to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Fold in chocolate chips. 

3. Portion into golf-ball-sized dough balls and store dough in an airtight container for 24 hours in the refrigerator. After the 24-hour period, you can freeze the dough or else bake the cookies.

4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Place cookie dough balls on a parchment-paper-lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake for 8-10 minutes. 

5. Let cookies cool on baking sheet for 1-2 minutes before removing to rack to cool completely.

Related post on The Pastry Chef's Baking: Loaded oatmeal chocolate chip cookies

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to National Chocolate Chip Day: Overnight chocolate chip cookies
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Food/Stir-It-Up/2015/0515/National-Chocolate-Chip-Day-Overnight-chocolate-chip-cookies
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe