How To Make The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie

There's really nothing better than a warm, gooey chocolate chip cookie. My recipe starts with brown butter for a rich and nutty flavor, then uses a few different types of flour to get a better chewiness, and even a few different types of chocolate for improved texture and flavor. I finished them with a touch of flaky salt and some vanilla ice cream.

The first secret to a perfect chocolate chip cookie is browning your butter. Fire up the heat. I like to look to make sure my flame is set to exactly medium high. Okay, great. And then get a rubber spatula and constant movement. Don't let any part of that butter sit in the pan for too long.

What you're basically doing when you're making brown butter is activating that butter. You're bringing out all of that nice nuttiness. When it really starts to sizzle, make sure you have a bowl set out on the side, preferably stainless steel, because that will cool down very fast once you put it in the fridge. And at this point we can turn down the heat just a touch, which

will give us better control as we get closer and closer to browning the butter. Two things to look out for are smell when you start to get that nuttiness, and watching the top of those bubbles, because those themselves will start to get a little bit brown too. Right? Here is my favorite part about the brown butter making process. When that foam gets

really, really thick. I can start to see it turning slightly brown, so I'm going to shift it off the heat. The residual heat in the pan is going to get me the rest of the way there immediately. I'm going to pour it off. We can't leave it in the pan for even a few seconds longer,

or it'll burn. And then into the fridge or freezer to set. Next step now is to work on our chocolate. I like to use two different kinds. First, dark chocolate, which I chop into different sized chunks, which will give us differences in texture when we go to eat the cookies. And then second, we have these bittersweet chocolate bits which are a little bit sweeter

and all the same size. So what I love about chopping up your chocolate by hand is you end up with some bigger pieces, like these chunks here, and then some of these finer chocolate shards that look like this. Now that our chocolate is set, we'll start with our flours. In this recipe I'm using two different types of flour.

First, classic all purpose flour. This will give our cookies some nice classic structure. And second, we've got this bread flour that'll give us a nice chewy bite in the cookies for our dry ingredients. We'll finish it off with baking soda and a touch of salt. Then I'll give this a nice quick whisk and set it off to the side.

By now our butter should be set. You can remove it from the freezer when it's nice and smooth, almost like a frosting into our mixing bowl. Brown butter. Don't waste any of it then. In we go with our brown sugar. Then some regular white sugar, two whole eggs. And also I like to do one additional egg yolk,

which really helps with the texture of the cookie. And then the last of our wet ingredients is this vanilla bean paste. I like to use this instead of vanilla extract because it just gives so much more vanilla flavor. And we'll just want to mix everything together until it becomes nice and consistent. After the first few moments, I like to scrape down the sides,

and once we're happy with that, whisking on a low speed slowly, I'll add in all of my dry ingredients, and after whisking for just a few more moments, I'll sprinkle in all of my bittersweet chocolate. I like to drop it all around to make sure it's evenly combining, and then quickly all of my dark chocolate.

We don't want to over mix now I'm just going to push it all through. Give it one last little scrape around the whole bowl, check around to make sure everything's evenly mixed. And that is our dough. This next step is entirely optional. If you cover your bowl with plastic wrap and then toss it in the fridge overnight or up to

72 hours, it's going to develop all sorts of extra flavor, just like a pizza dough. But if you want to bake it right now, you can skip this part and they'll still be fantastic. 24 hours later, my dough is rested. It's taken quite a good nap. I'll tell you the truth. Normally if I'm baking,

I don't measure anything out. Maybe I shouldn't say that. In the case of these cookies, I want to make them perfect. So I'm gonna scoop some of this dough out and try to get each one to about 140g in weight. Let's see if I can nail it. Six grams over. So close. That would have been awesome. This will help to make sure that they're all baking in the

same amount of time. If you're making these at home, you don't actually have to go and measure everything out, but just know that this recipe should make you about eight big cookies. I'm only going to measure out six dough balls because that's all that my baking sheet can fit. Now we're almost there!

The final step is also optional, but they will make you a slightly better tasting cookie. I suggest you add on just the tiniest pinch of flaky salt. Not too much. Literally just 10 or 15 small flakes. And finally, I like to take just a bit of extra chocolate and press it right onto the

top of my cookie to almost make this lava pool of chocolate when I bake them. As a last step, unless you want a really flat cookie, I highly suggest covering them with plastic wrap and then placing them in the freezer for about 15 minutes or until firm to the touch. These have already rested in the freezer, and to bake,

I've preheated my oven to 350 Fahrenheit. And because these cookies are so incredibly large, I'm only going to bake three at a time. These will now bake for 15 minutes, rotating one time during the process. So what's happening here while they bake is really cool. This is why you want to put them

in the freezer before baking. That outer part will melt out first, and that edge will get really nice and crispy, while the inside takes a little bit longer to melt as it falls down. This will give us a soft, chewy interior and a nice crispy outside. And with that said, it's time to rotate and I'll keep going for another few minutes.

We'll know that these cookies are finished when the edges are nice and golden brown, and then that middle is still nice and shiny and just barely gooey. This is right when I like to take them out. So for this last step here, I'm just gonna drop the baking sheet three times and you'll see the cookies will fall

down just a little bit. And then I'll toss it back in the oven just for a minute or two more to finish them up. I like to eat my cookies two different ways. The first way. Grab a bowl, get some vanilla ice cream, then get a nice scoop of that in a bowl.

Ooh, what a good scoop. And then I know you're supposed to let your cookies sit for a while. Just watch what happens when I lay this cookie over my ice cream. It should slowly tear and split apart right over my ice cream. I've been to so many restaurants all over the world. I've had so many different desserts in my life.

This and maybe lava cake are the two best desserts I've ever had. No chef, no pastry chef. Nobody I know has ever created a better dessert and a better sweet bite than just cookies and ice cream. Well, this is it. Just simple chocolate chip cookie with a little bit of vanilla ice cream. This bite. Oh my gosh.

And if I split this down the middle, you'll see that melty chocolate with that melted cookie. One of my favorite things of all time. I'm not a huge fan of room temperature cookies, but you can see after we've rested them that they're beautiful. They've got all those nice cracks in them from when we whack the baking sheet against

the cutting board, little pools of chocolate lava on the top. And just by looking at them, you know they're going to be good.