PrintIntroducing the Serious Eats New York Chocolate Chip Cookie Championships
Who is the tastiest cookie of them all? [Photo: Robyn Lee]
Let's be honest: it's hard to make a bad chocolate chip cookie. Anytime you've got something sweet, warm, and chocolatey emerging from the oven, odds are it's going to taste great.
And yet there's that perfect cookie we all dream about. A precise balance of buttery, sweet, and salty. Fine chocolate that plays a big part but doesn't overwhelm. And perhaps most important, it's crisp around the edges but soft and melty in the middle.
At Serious Eats, we're on a constant quest for that Platonic ideal of a cookie. So we decided to formalize our efforts to find New York's best. Much as we'd love to pit 40 or 50 cookies against each other in a blind tasting, we didn't think even our professional sweet teeth could take it. Thus we've broken it into rounds, playoff-style. The result? The Serious Eats New York Chocolate Chip Cookie Championships.
Our methodology and the first installation, after the jump.
We'll be breaking the city into four chunks—Uptown, Midtown, Downtown, and Outer Boroughs—and doing a blind taste-test of the best cookies from each region. Then, we'll enter the winners from each round into one grand final tasting.
First up? Uptown. Here's our first installation.
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5 Comments:
Ooooh, a cookie throw-down.
One thing I learned from Cooks Illustrated is that melted butter gives you a crispy cookie, while whipped softened butter gives you a chewy cookie. I find a mixture of both is best...crisp edges with a chewy centre. I use all the other tricks as well...adding grated chocolate to the batter, a dash of chocolate liqueur, buying the best vanilla and flour, not rolling too much.
A good cookie is one excellent reason to live another day.
NotAmerican at 2:09PM on 11/09/09
I've heard that too, NotAmerican. I also heard that letting the batter rest overnight is another "secret." :)
pastry262 at 2:42PM on 11/09/09
This contest is relevant to my interests ...
redfish at 4:03PM on 11/09/09
I rarely buy chocolate chip cookies because the ones I make are the best ever. Just ask anyone who has had one.
suegramma at 5:00PM on 11/09/09
melted butter gives you the chewy cookie. and I haven't had much luck with the refrigeration trick.
seanm at 11:00AM on 11/10/09