the great chocolate chip cookie experiment

An episode of Top Chef Just Desserts I was watching a couple of weeks ago really made me crave Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies (the episode where Erica made them for a bake sale for a local high school). I couldn’t really find time to bake until now, since I just finished my last midterm exam before I start finals next week. But I’m done and I ditched my classes for the day, so I figure now is the best time.

So, you’re probably thinking, “What the hell is this girl talking about? Experiment what?”

Well, honey, I’m going to pull out my high school chemistry lab report skills out on you. Here we have the scientific method of finding my perfect crispy, chewy chocolate chip cookie.

Well, I was reading through a bunch of tips and recipes online to find how to get that chewy, crispy texture because I don’t really like cakey or soft cookies, and a lot of them pointed to one key thing: refrigerating the dough to get a rich, toffee-flavored, chewy cookie. Indeed there is a whole New York Times article on this. Ideally, they suggest 36 hours. So, here we go. I made a batch of my go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe because it calls for everything you need for a chewy, crispy cookie: melted butter, brown and white sugar, and an extra egg yolk. I added the walnuts just to make things interesting.

So, after my EXTENSIVE research,

Hypothesis: Refrigerating cookie dough will give me a damn good cookie. (Or am I supposed to say its not? And then reject that hypothesis? Or is that statistics? I don’t remember.)

Materials:
1 batch of Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies -
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 refrigerator
1 oven
Misc. baking utensils

Experiment Procedures:

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt; set aside.

In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended. Beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk until light and creamy. Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended.

Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon.
Refrigerate dough.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets or line with parchment paper.

Drop cookie dough 1/4 cup at a time onto the prepared cookie sheets. Cookies should be about 3 inches apart.
Bake for 15 to 17 minutes in the preheated oven, or until the edges are lightly toasted. Cool on baking sheets for a few minutes before transferring to wire racks to cool completely.

I baked a batch right after I mixed up the dough, and refrigerated the rest of the dough. Then, I baked a batch after 12 hours, 24 hours, and 36 hours.

Results:

right after mixing.

after 24 hours.

after 36 hours.

Conclusion:
I accept my hypothesis.
HYPOTHESIS PROVEN!
Okay, that’s enough science for today, kiddies. My brain hurts.
But definitely, the cookies that were kept in the fridge for a day or more tasted better. They even looked different. The edges were slightly crispy and the centers were soft and a bit crispy. I think next time, I’ll use higher-quality butter because these weren’t as crisp as I wanted them to be.

I’ll update again soon with some Thanksgiving recipes. :)

breakfast…

… made by somebody else. Not me. :)

Combine four hungry girls, a rainy day, a waffle-iron, a lazy, lazy Friday afternoon with no classes, jug of OJ, and some champagne.

Champagne can be cheap, no matter. You can mask it with the juice.

Mmmmmmmmm.

Thanks for the waffles, Narhee! So goooood. Hit the spot. Topped with butter, maple syrup, and a lot of whipped cream.

Waffles&Mimosas ♡

Finish breakfast with googling the Sexiest Man of 2010.

What a cutie.

unconventional carbonara

Random Craving of the Day: Pasta alla Carbonara. But I was missing most of the crucial ingredients. It’s also 92 degrees so now that I’m sitting in my A/Cfied apartment, I refuse to leave. Not even to go buy groceries.

No spaghetti noodles.
Well…. I had my Butternut Squash Triangoli. Which is Trader Joe’s fancy way of saying Pumpkin Ravioli.

No cream.
Found a recipe with no cream. Thank you, Tyler Florence.

No bacon.
Leftover Capocollo from my salami pack?

No parsley.
Maybe I’ll just use some of my roommate’s basil… Even though I know it’s totally not the same thing.

And here we are.
Carbonara that’s not really carbonara at all.

I think the Italians would shoot me if they saw this.

Butternut Squash Ravioli

1 package Butternut Squash Ravioli
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
4 ounces pancetta or bacon, cubed
4 cloves of garlic, minced
2 large eggs
1 cup freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
Ground black pepper

Make sure to prepare the sauce while the ravioli is cooking to ensure that the ravioli will be hot and ready when the sauce is finished; it is very important that the pasta is hot when adding the egg mixture, so that the heat of the pasta cooks the raw eggs in the sauce.

Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil, add the pasta and cook for 3 – 4 minutes. Drain the pasta well, reserving 1/2 cup of the starchy cooking water to use in the sauce later.

For the sauce, heat the olive oil in a deep skillet over medium flame. Add the bacon (or in my case, capocollo) and saute until the bacon is crisp and the fat is rendered. Toss the garlic into the fat and saute for less than 1 minute to soften.

Add the hot, drained spaghetti to the pan and toss for 2 minutes to coat it in the bacon fat. Beat the eggs and Parmesan together in a mixing bowl, stirring well to prevent lumps. Remove the pan from the heat and pour the egg/cheese mixture into the pasta, whisking quickly until the eggs thicken, but do not scramble (this is done off the heat to ensure this does not happen.) Thin out the sauce with a bit of the reserved pasta water, until it reaches desired consistency. Season the carbonara with several turns of freshly ground black pepper and taste for salt.

And serve.

I think I need to find a lighter sauce for the Butternut Squash Ravioli though. I’ve tried tomato sauce, alfredo sauce, and this sauce, and it all kind of overpowers the pumpkin flavor. Maybe next time just a simple cheese and olive oil toss?

And my cheese sauce kind of curdled and got lumpy after I tossed it in. Will do more research on how to fix that…