How To Make Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies Nigella Ottolenghi
September 22, 2024 · 2 min · 320 words · Gertrude Carter
Quality butter (look for at least 82% fat) not only adds flavour but a fluffier texture to your bake – unless you’re going vegan, don’t scrimp on the butter.
This XXX-Rated Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe specifies both semi-sweet and unsweetened chocolate. The bitterness of dark chocolate pairs well with the sweet dough. You can also use a bar of quality dark chocolate, chopped into rough chunks. For a bit of variety, use a mix of dark and milk chocolate. Try to use the highest quality of chocolate your budget permits and steer clear of ‘baking chocolate’. We particularly love Pump Street’s baking pastilles, which are brilliant for creating cookies with layers of chocolate chunks.
Cream the butter and sugar first to help break the butter down evenly and incorporate air into your bake, then fold through the flour so it’s nice and evenly distributed throughout the mixture. You don’t have to be too delicate with this – put some muscle into it.
Weigh the dough. This might sound fanatical, but evenly sized cookies will ensure even baking – the last thing you want is a mix of over-baked and under-baked cookies. Try rolling them into balls or take the Nigella approach and flatten them into fat patties before baking them. (See Nigella’s Sweet and Salty Chocolate Cookies). Chilling the cookies in the fridge overnight before you bake them will firm up the butter, helping your cookies to hold their shape and flavour more effectively in the oven.
Once your cookies are in the oven, keep a close eye on the clock. “The secret here is to slightly under-bake the cookies, which keeps them soft and fudgy”, say Yotam Ottolenghi and Helen Goh of their Chocolate, Banana and Pecan Cookies. Bake the cookies until soft to touch or as Nigella says, “once the surface is cracked, and the cookies have spread”.
Inspired to bake? Gorge on these ultimate chocolate-chip cookie recipes.
