This is my classic cookie. It’s what I crave and the reason that I often have butter coming to room temperature on the counter. The dough exists only to hold the chocolate in place. But without the chocolate, this dough makes a great base for any number of cookies: dried cherry, white chocolate and cardamom, chopped dates and walnut, or oatmeal and rum raisin (just replace some of the flour with oatmeal).
Use all three sugars; if you need cookies now and don’t have turbinado sugar (also known as raw sugar), add more dark brown sugar.You’ll miss out on a nice little sugary crunch, but the cookies will still be amazing. Don’t skimp on the time you spend creaming the butter and sugar. As the sugar cuts through the butter to create bubbles, you build air and structure. Most people think baking soda and baking powder create bubbles in baking, but they only make existing bubbles bigger. So cream until the butter and sugar mixture is very pale and light, which takes a good 5 minutes with your electric mixer on medium speed.
There is a lot of chocolate, good dark chocolate, in this recipe. Chocolate chips work too, but they won’t puddle and melt into chocolate layers. To cut down the cost a bit, I often use a combination of a great chocolate bar and chocolate chips.
Finally, don’t over-bake.The oven temperature is an obnoxious 360° F so that an extra burst of heat sets the outside while the inside remains gooey. The end result is a crispy, gooey, and chewy cookie. Let the cookies cool on the tray for at least 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack—any less than that and the cookie will most likely fall apart from all that chocolate and gooeyness. Oh goodness, it's time to start softening more butter.
The dough is best made a day or two before you plan to bake the cookies—their flavor and texture improves with time. Leftover dough can be rolled into a 2-inch-thick log, wrapped in parchment paper, and then refrigerated for 1 week or frozen for up to 1 month.You can also freeze the baked cookies, but I prefer to freeze the dough.
One final note: I always double this recipe. Just thought you should know.
From Date Night In (Running Press 2014) —Ashley Rodriguez
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