a year of cookie research in 2.5 minutes!

Hi, Angel. I've been researching the science of better cookies for almost a year now. So here's everything I've learned. Stop seeing recipes as fixed lists, looking at ratio. Sugar, fat, egg, liquid, compared to flour. You'll start to understand how cookies behave the way they do, even before they bake. Spend your money on the things that count. Not every ingredient needs to be fancy, but the upgrades I've noticed most good vanilla, chocolate. I like to use Belgian chocolate like Callebaut. I prefer chopped chips because chips are often lower in cocoa butter and they contain stabilizers. They tend to hold their shape. Chopped chocolate gives you those shards and pools and unctuous chocolate throughout. I just much prefer textually. If you love the taste of brown butter, but you find that it causes textural issues, try using half browned and half regular butter. You allow yourself to keep that toasted flavour, but it retains more of the original water and structure. Chill your dough when needed. Resting will redistribute moisture and hydrate your flour. And also, cold fat melts later in the oven, which will help control spread. If I have the time, I like to refrigerate for at least 8 hours or overnight, and then freeze them for a final 2 hours. Choose the right method. Creaming butter and sugar will add air, which creates a lighter cookie. For really chunky cookies, I do not mix butter and sugar. I add the chocolate and then the dry ingredients, and finally, the egg and the vanilla. Some of the flour is coated in fat before the egg water reaches it, so less immediately gluten develops and very little air is added, which means you get a nice dense, but thick cookie. Always salt your dough! And usually finish with flaky sea salt too. Salt presses some of that bitterness and rebalances the sweetness, which allows the chocolate and the caramel and the vanilla to stand out. It's the lowest effort flavour upgrade you can do. And finally, bake for flavour, not only softness. So I love a gooey centre as much as the next person, but this trend for underbaking means the surface of the cookie never dries and browns. That browning is the Maillard reaction, making our cookies look nice. It's adding a ton of flavour and aroma, as well as deeper colour and a toasty, nutty, smell. It doesn't kick off until food reaches about 140 Celsius, and even then, it's slow. Cookies don't have the luxury of hours in the oven, so we need a high heat to speed up this reaction. If you aim for golden brown edges and a centre that still looks a little soft, then the residual heat of the tray finishes it. Good. You should be good to go.