Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Photo by Katie Kay

This recipe calls for melted butter instead of softened, which sounded very strange to me.  Baking Illustrated has an excellent explanation into their research on page 433 (which is one of the hundreds of reasons I'm in the middle of reading this cookbook as if it were a novel.)  Basically they wanted a chewy cookie, so they melted the butter so the flour can react faster with the fat molecules of the butter forming gluten, which makes the cookie chewy.
Melting the standard 2 sticks of butter made the cookies too greasy, so they lowered the butter to a stick and a half.  But by reducing the fat in the cookie, they got tough as they cooled because fat acts as a tenderizer.  So they took out the egg white on one of the traditional 2 eggs because the yolk is where all the fat is at in the egg.  They claim this is what worked for them.
You might find this boring, but I think it's absolutely fascinating and I wish I knew more about the science of baking so I could come up with my own creations.  Until then, I'll ready my beloved Baking Illustrated cookbook and learn my life lessons from them.
The dough for this recipe was strangely dark, I guess because of the dark brown sugar I used, although I use dark brown sugar in most of my chocolate chip cookie recipes and the dough is never this dark.  It also got very hard when I put it in the fridge, although this made it very clean and manageable for putting the dough on the cookie sheet.
Cooked, these were beautiful!  Sometimes cookies puff up too much and have a flat, domed top which makes them unattractive to me, and these did NOT do that.  They had a gorgeous color, too.  Plus, they were tasty, of course.  I was very happy with these and I would definitely make them again if I planned on cooking off the entire batch.  The raw dough was not edible.
Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies by Baking Illustrated
2 cups plus 2 Tbsp flour 1/2 tsp baking soda 1/2 tsp salt 1 1/2 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled until warm 1 cup packed brown sugar (I used dark) 1/2 cup granulated sugar 1 large egg plus 1 egg yolk 2 tsp vanilla extract 1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips
Whisk together the flour, soda and salt; set aside.  In a mixer bowl, combine butter and sugars until thoroughly blended.  Add eggs and vanilla until combined.  Slowly add dry ingredients and beat until just incorporated.  Stir in chips by hand.
Cook at 325 for 11-13 minutes, or until at desired doneness.