Friday, March 30, 2012

Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have been searching for a replacement to my favourite white flour chocolate chip cookies for a very long time. I had a lesson in irony recently, because I have purchased whole grain cookbooks as part of this search, and been disappointed again and again. Then I read a few foodie blogs and found out there is one recipe that 'everyone' is talking about. And guess what—all it is, more or less, is my original favourite white flour recipe, with whole wheat flour swapped for white!!

All these years and all this time looking, and the solution was right under my nose.

You can check out other bloggers' thoughts on these cookies, and link to the recipe, here.

I have to write a couple of qualifiers, though. Molly Rosenburg, of Orangette fame, likes that the original recipe by Kim Boyce starts with cold butter. She recommends cutting it into small cubes, so that it will cream properly. This is supposedly to keep the cookies from spreading too far.

When I decided to try this recipe, I had already softened the butter, because, well, that's what you do when you're going to make cookies. And I was a little grumpy about the instructions, because there is a time and a place for fussy baking, and cookies just aren't it. I sometimes steer clear of cookie recipes that require me to refrigerate the dough overnight, because when I get the cookie urge, it's strong and sudden, and will not wait for 24 hours.

So I just used my softened butter like I usually would, and didn't bother refrigerating the dough, just made the cookies after mixing. The only change, other than the flour, from my earlier favourite recipe, is the use of kosher salt. I really enjoy this little change, because the salt doesn't quite dissolve, and the cookies have a bit of the salty-sweet aspect that is so popular these days (and which I love). These cookies turned out crispy-chewy, with the exact texture and flavour I've been looking for. Eureka!

It's also nice to know that if I hadn't softened my butter, and was hit with a cookie craving, I could still make it work with the cutting-into-small-pieces approach.

I'm so happy to have found the ultimate whole wheat chocolate chip cookie recipe, but it would have been nice to have known about it earlier in my search. Hmph.

P.S. to my readers, I'm so sorry for my long silence. My paid work has been picking up quite substantially, and between juggling childcare and meeting deadlines, everyone in our family has had some sort of illness in the past while, and I've been recovering from an infection that knocked me down for all of February. I've got to work some blog time into my schedule somehow, without sacrificing sleep. I'll work on it! Don't give up on me!