My review copy of David Lebovitz’s newest book, Ready for Dessert arrived recently, and I’ve just started baking from it (the Ginger Cake is amazing, by the way). In our recent interview with him he said “The Chocolate Chip Cookies are a standout. I’ve been making them for over two decades and I’ve not found a better one.” Aha, I thought, when the book arrived – an opportunity for a bake-off!

I set out to test his recipe against two recent contenders for the top cookie honors – Thomas Keller’s recipe from Ad Hoc At Home (of which he writes “this is our version of what is arguably the best cookie ever”), and the famous New York Times recipe from 2008, which was developed after an epic search by David Leite, of Leite’s Culinaria, who called these “the consummate chocolate chip cookie.”

This is a completely subjective test, of course, but I did rope in some tasters to help out. And who could pass up a chance to eat a lot of great cookies in the service of (pseudo) science?

Ingredients

I used Robin Hood unbleached all-purpose flour for the Lebovitz and Keller recipes (the equivalent in the US would be King Arthur all-purpose), and Robin Hood bread and pastry flours for the New York Times recipe. I used white sea salt or Diamond Crystal kosher salt, with a sprinkle of fleur de sel in the New York Times recipe. I used Callebaut couverture chocolate for all of the recipes, either semi-sweet (about 50%) or bittersweet (70%), and hand chopping the blocks into small chunks. As Leite writes in the New York Times Article accompanying his recipe, Jaques Torres uses couverture chocolate specifically because of the way that it melts. Instead of remaining intact, as commercial chocolate chips do, the chunks of chocolate melt into thin layers inside the cookie, enhancing the mouth feel and the flavour.

All doughs were rested for at least 24 hours in the refrigerator before baking – 36 hours for the New York Times recipe. Aging the dough is one of the principal recommendations in the New York Times article and it has a measurable impact on the flavour of the cookie. To be fair I applied this to all three recipes, though Keller doesn’t mention it (David Lebovitz does suggest doing this).

The Recipes

David Lebovitz, from Ready for Dessert

Sample recipe here: http://blogs.laweekly.com/squidink/cookbooks/david-lebovitz-chocolate-chip/

In his head notes, David mentions the New York Times recipe, and although he doesn’t say if he actually baked it, he writes that he whipped up a batch of his own recipe and “with all due respect to the author of that recipe, I couldn’t imagine chocolate chip cookies tasting any better.”

His recipe uses all-purpose flour, a mix of granulated and light brown sugar, 14 ounces of chopped chocolate (I used semi-sweet 50%) and, unique among the recipes tested, 2 cups (about 8 ounces) of toasted and chopped nuts. The recipe is also quite low in salt compared to the other two, with a miniscule 1/8 of a teaspoon.

I toasted walnuts and pecans for the nuts. He recommends minimal beating of the butter and sugar to prevent the cookies from spreading too much when baked. I shaped the dough into four logs and wrapped them in plastic for a daylong rest in the fridge.

On baking day I sliced the logs into disks and baked for about 12 minutes. True to the recipe, they didn’t spread out as much as the other cookies did. I must also applaud the use of weights in this book – all baking books should measure ingredients by weight.

Thomas Keller, from Ad Hoc At Home

Sample recipe here: http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/02/ad-hoc-chocolate-chip-cookies-recipe.html

Keller’s recipe is distinguished by its use of two different varieties of chocolate – bittersweet and semi-sweet, 10 ounces in total, as well as dark brown sugar mixed with granulated sugar. It contains a teaspoon of kosher salt, and unlike the other recipes (and most chocolate chip cookie recipes) no vanilla.

The dough is mixed in a slightly unconventional way, with butter added cold rather than at room temperature. After a fairly long beating of the sugar and butter, I combined the ingredients and put it in a bowl in the fridge for a day and a half before baking.

I baked these for about 12 minutes. Keller does not include weights in his recipes, which is odd, since he recommends using a kitchen scale in the book’s introduction.

David Leite, New York Times Recipe

Recipe here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/091crex.html

Article here (must read): http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/09chip.html?ref=dining

Unlike the other two recipes, the New York Times version doesn’t use all-purpose flour. Instead you use an equal mixture of cake flour and bread flour. It is a recipe of mosts, in this comparison: it has the most baking soda of all the recipes at 1 1/2 teaspoons, and also includes an equal amount of baking powder, an ingredient missing from the other two. It has the most salt, using 1 1/2 teaspoons in the dough and a sprinkling of fleur de sel on top when you’re baking. It has double the vanilla of the Lebovitz recipe, and it has the most chocolate, calling for 20 ounces of dark chocolate (I used bittersweet here). Yes, there’s an extra cup of flour, but these ingredients are all higher in proportion than the other two recipes. This recipe also includes weights for the ingredients (hooray!).

I baked the cookies for about 14 minutes.

Tasting

First things first: these are all excellent cookies. You can’t go wrong with any of them and it was extremely enjoyable testing them. The use of high-quality chocolate is, of course, half the battle – good chocolate elevates any cookie recipe. The second half is the aging of the dough; it really does increase the depth of taste here, and if you can restrain yourself, is recommended for any similar recipe. Do these two things and any chocolate chip cookie recipe is going to be improved.

I found that David Lebovitz’s were the most ‘different’ tasting because of the reduced salt and the use of toasted nuts. Some might say that they weren’t really classic chocolate chip cookies because of the nuts, but I wouldn’t – the only adulteration I think is allowable would be the addition of nuts. Frankly, I wished for more salt: the lack of it muted the flavor. When I first tasted all three cookies I ranked these last behind the other two, partly because of the lack of salt. Interestingly, however, after a day or two of continued sampling (had to see how they tasted over time, you see…), I found myself coming back to them more often as a bit of a break from the intense chocolate of the other cookies.

The Thomas Keller cookies are the most ‘adult’ of the bunch. They are thin and laminated with layers of chocolate rather than having visible chunks. The lack of vanilla changes the character of the cookie – the dough is tasty, but it is more of a vessel for carrying the flavor of the chocolate than anything else – a chipless cookie would be fairly unremarkable.

Finally, the New York Times cookies have the most flavorful dough of the three recipes. You could bake these without any chocolate and get a buttery, delicious cookie. With these, you have to use a strong chocolate to balance the flavor of the dough. The higher amount of vanilla, and possibly the use of different flours (as well as aging the dough) does the work here. Not to mention the extra salt. Using fleur de sel and coarse salt gives small salty explosions as you chew.

I’ve been a fan of the New York Times cookies since first making them in 2008, and this taste test has confirmed that in my eyes, they are still the best. However taste is such a personal thing that I had to get more opinions. So following are the reactions of a bunch of testers including my daughters, wife, brother-in-law and mother-in-law, a secretary, mail carrier, financial administrator, and magazine editor whom I rounded up.

My 5-year-old chose the New York Times cookie. “This one is the best because the dough tastes really good.” My wife also agreed. My 7-year-old liked them all equally. The in-laws both liked the Thomas Keller cookies the best. But when I took my wares to the outside world, David Lebovitz reigned supreme – three out of four picked his cookies as the best, and the same three also found the New York Times cookies to be too salty for their tastes.

Conclusion

Frankly, the results are inconclusive. I could try a larger sample size, but then I’d have to give away all my precious, precious cookies. I think I’ll just have to keep testing at home, by myself, possibly in a locked room…

Update

Cook’s Illustrated Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

June 6, 2010

My sister, as I noted in the comments below, swore that the Cook’s Illustrated version of these cookies was still the best – she actually cooked and tried the previous three recipes herself, and favoured the Lebovitz cookie over the other two, but not as much as her personal favourite. So I thought I’d better give them a shot. I subscribe to the Cook’s Illustrated website, so I was able to get the recipe she loves here: http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=5769 – this is the 1996 recipe, by the way, for “Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies”. In their typical exhaustive fashion, they’ve created several other recipes, including “Thin and Crispy” and “Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies”. I have not tried these others (yet).

The recipe is fairly simple and quick – it does suggest you melt the butter first, then mix it with the sugar, which is a little unusual (they say it gives more chewiness as it dissolves the sugar more), and it contains one full egg and one egg yolk and two teaspoons of vanilla extract. It also suggests you use 1/4 cup measures for each cookie and that you roll them into a ball and break them in half, then put them on the cookie tray, broken side up, to enhance the texture (smaller cookies crisp too much when cooking).

I baked them exactly as the recipe suggests, weighing the flour and using regular semi-sweet chocolate chips instead of fancy chopped chocolate, and (sorry sis!), to be honest, was a bit disappointed. I’m sure they would have been better if I’d used the same chocolate as the rest of the recipes, but the main problem was the dough. They are definitely chewy, but I still found them a little cake-like in texture, and are a sweeter and have a stronger vanilla flavour than I really like. Of all the recipes, these were the thickest and most conventional – very similar to commercial chocolate chip cookies. I won’t be making them again.

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Note: I received a review copy of Ready for Dessert courtesy of Ten Speed Press. I bought my own copy of Ad Hoc at Home. I used my own electrons to look at The New York Times online. I used my own subscription to get the Cook’s Illustrated recipe.