lab report: ny times v. toll house

i haven't done a lab report since high school chemistry (10 years ago!), so here you go.

purpose/problem: i used to use the chocolate chip cookie recipe from nick malgieri's cookies unlimited; however, as i stopped making chocolate chip cookies as frequently, i forgot the recipe (i basically had it memorized) and then reverted to the trusty toll house cookie recipe. i have been using the toll house recipe for some time, though it's not the best chocolate chip cookie in the world, to be honest. it's just the easiest and simplest to remember. then i saw the new york times article and had to know: does the new york times chocolate chip cookie recipe really beat out toll house chocolate chip cookies? a corollary question: if the new york times beats toll house, is the extra effort required to make the cookies outweighed by the better flavor of the cookies (ie, do you actually gain utility from the new york times cookies)? specifically, the new york times recipe differs in the proportions of ingredients (most notably, the flour-butter ratio) and also in the inclusion of a chilling period. which of these differences has the most effect on the cookies?

hypothesis: this is a taste test, so positing a hypothesis would probably unduly influence the outcome of this experiment.

materials: here is the new york times recipe and also the toll house recipe. i don't really believe in using an electric mixer to make cookies so i used a bowl, wooden spoon, and measuring cups. i couldn't find the measuring spoons, so i just estimated with a non-standard metal spoon from the silverware drawer.

procedure: i made a batch of the new york times recipe and a batch of toll house at the same time (well, not exactly at the same time because i only have two hands), and chilled it for 24-ish hours. i also made a batch of toll house before i started baking the other cookies; it sat in the fridge chilling for about 2 1/2 hours before i baked it. it was still a little softer than i would prefer when i baked it, but it was late and i was tired, so there you go.

i made a few substitutions in the batter: all batches omitted vanilla extract, because vanilla extract is gross. no, really, i find it quite disgusting these days. in addition to not liking the flavor of vanilla extract, i'm treading the locavore/clear flavors/higher yuppie moral ground when i posit to you that omitting the vanilla allows the butter-sugar flavor to come through better. why muck up something that's already fantastic? i mean, we eat butter cookies for a reason: because butter and sugar is a wonderful flavor. i'm sure there's some reason why we use vanilla that has to do with trade and nations manipulating what we eat. because really, what if some enterprising nation wanted us to eat a lot of almond extract and started providing subsidies to almond extract producers? yeah, our cookies would have almond extract in them. so i view vanilla extract as an unnecessary, capricious inclusion in these recipes. i will also say that i love real vanilla, as in vanilla beans scraped from the pod; i like both the flavor and the very slight crunch you get when you eat the tiny vanilla flecks.

um, ok, more substitutions, now that i'm done ranting about vanilla. i used light brown sugar for the first two batches and then dark brown sugar for the last batch, because when i went to whole foods to buy sugar they were actually out of light brown sugar. i generally use dark brown sugar for chocolate chip cookies anyway, but in terms of keeping the sugar variable constant, i've kind of failed miserably. for your records, i also used ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips for all of the cookies - i like the shape and size of these chips. they just make your cookies more attractive - they have a nicer sheen than other chocolate chips, too. lastly - for the new york times recipe, it stipulates a combination of cake and bread flour. i'm guessing that this is a measure to prevent too much gluten from forming when you stir the dough, since it has a high flour:butter ration. i didn't really care to buy cake and bread flour, though, since then i'd be stuck with cake and bread flour. accordingly, i just used regular unbleached flour instead.

analysis/conclusion: yeah, this is getting combined because this experiment does not totally conform to the lab report format. sorry for you purists out there.

effect of chilling the dough
i do typically chill the dough before baking it, but not for flavor reasons. it's simply a measure to prevent the cookies from spreading too much as they bake: the colder the dough is, the more slowly the butter will melt and you'll have prettier cookies. it's also easier to handle if it's not sticking more to your hands than the baking sheet - all the more easily to make perfectly shaped cookies without bothering with a cookie dough scooper.

so i'm bothered by the new york times article, actually, in which david leite talks about the recipe. it seemed to me that the article was mostly about extolling the virtues of chilling the dough, and the miraculous effect that has on the dough. well, i didn't read the recipes before making them, and after looking at them a little more closely, i see that the new york times' recipe actually has a much higher flour:butter ratio - ie, more flour per tablespoon butter. and i think that chilling the dough does have an effect, but this effect is mitigated in the new york times recipe by the fact that it has so much flour in it - the dough needs more time in the first place to chill, because there are more dry ingredients than there are in the toll house recipe. so the article is actually being a little facetious in the way that it plays up chilling the dough, since the recipe it gives automatically needs a long chilling time, and thus the effect of chilling the dough is partially negated.

at the end of the day, it's true that chilling the dough seems to have some effect on the flavor. or so people tell me: having brought the vast majority of the cookies to work, it seemed that the chilled-dough toll house cookies were the favorite. alack, my palate did not detect enough of a difference between the 24-hour-chilled toll house cookies and the chilled-until-firm toll house cookies. it's up to you to decide what you want to do when you make the cookies, then.

effect of the flour:butter ratio
let's return to the ingredient proportions and the flour:butter ratio. toll house does 2 1/4c flour for 2 sticks butter, while the new york times does about 3 2/3c flour for 2 1/2 sticks butter. that's 0.14 cups flour/tbsp butter for toll house v. 0.18 cups flour/tbsp butter for ny times, or 2.24T flour/T butter for toll house and 2.93T/T butter for ny times. a significant difference: that's 30% more flour in the new york times recipe. of course, i did a straight substitution without weighing things out, as my electronic scale is in cambridge, so there was probably some adjusting to do that i didn't do. but still: that is a noteworthy difference.

ok, so it's true that somehow this higher flour content made the new york times cookies a lot more attractive. a lot more attractive. but it also made the cookies a little chewier with too much crumb - i have to say that i prefer a cookie with more butter and sugar, so that it's a little candy-like in the caramelization of sugar and butter, rather than being a more bready cookie. all things considered, more attractive cookies is not an acceptable tradeoff for less flavorful cookies unless you're not planning to actually eat the cookies. or if you're giving them to someone you don't like, or who you know won't be eating the cookies.

effect of weather
i'd like to put in a word about the weather here. i generally haven't baked all that much in hot weather, and i recall vaguely that at cutcat, we would have the air conditioning on while i was baking so it was never really hot when i baked stuff there. (i know it's not a good strategy with respect to energy and sustainability, but nobody's perfect.) in this case, i was baking at night when it was cooler, but it was still pretty hot, and i'm fairly certain that this had an effect on the cookies - they spread faster than they normally would. i say this because in every other case when i've made chocolate chip cookies, they have not looked quite so...flat as these did. in short, they looked like an amateur made them, and that was certainly a little annoying. i mean, if they were going to have the gall to look so ugly, then why bother to chill the dough at all? hmph. that's what i think of you, new york weather.

effect of attractiveness of cookies on eating utility
it's nice to know that people (including myself) like chocolate chip cookies so much that even if they're kind of crappy looking, people will eat them. chocolate chip cookies positively ooze nostalgia for childhood - or, at the very least, other people have memories of making chocolate chip cookies as a child. i don't, really; perhaps this is why i really like them now. however, this brings up an interesting issue: how much are we affected by how good the food looks? i mean, i was really disappointed with these toll house batches because the last batch i made a few weeks back were the most gorgeous cookies i had ever seen. they were golden brown from the dark brown sugar (billington's brand), perfectly puffed but still soft and chewy in the middle, and the chocolate chips looked so pretty in the mass of the cookie that they positively glowed. they certainly had a very pretty luster to them. and because these cookies were so beautiful, they were actually more pleasing to eat. i can picture those cookies now, and it frustrates me that the next batch didn't look like them either. i know it wasn't the leavening, because it was new; i know it wasn't the dark brown sugar, either. the only thing that was different was the butter: i used plugra in that batch last month because it was cheaper to buy a half pound of plugra than it was to buy a pound of regular american butter. but wouldn't you expect that using butter with higher fat content would cause the cookies to spread more? i sure would, yet the converse of that happened. search me; i have no answers for you except to say that i would probably have to do another experiment between regular and european butter to figure out where the culprit lies. i think it's most likely the weather, but i do wonder if the plugra had an effect on the dough. to come back to cookie attractiveness: i suppose i'm lucky that people are so forgiving with chocolate chip cookies; only my ego is bruised.

and the winner is...
i almost forgot to render my verdict regarding the recipes! whoops. well, everyone, the new york times is a little like per se: pretending to be all posh, but not really delivering in the end (let us just say that per se delivers more than the new york times, though). i really don't think it's worth all the trouble to make the new york times cookies. i do think that toll house can be improved - the cookies are really a little too sweet for me - but i have yet to find the recipe that does that. i guess now we know?