Top Chef: Just Desserts Chocolate Chip Cookie

Well, it's Fat Tuesday. What I don't have is a New Orleans-inspired recipe, but what I do have to share today is a GREAT recipe for any of you that may be giving up chocolate or (gasp) sweets for the next several weeks. To all of you - you have one more night. This recipe is absolutely doable. Bake them!

This chocolate chip cookie recipe is one of many that I have saved including a couple Alton Brown recipes, the Levain Bakery cookie, and the New York Times chocolate chip cookies among others (I really should have a chocolate chip cookie bake-off to determine our favorite). I think I may have originally chosen this recipe so that I could use my new kitchen scale. However, I have already made them twice - once as a batch of cookie dough that my husband could keep in the freezer while I was still gone and the second time as one of the first three things I made in my kitchen after returning home. In reality, I had one cookie the first time when I mixed up the dough for him over Christmas break and was thinking about these babies for 2 months until I could make them again. 

This recipe results in a TON of large, slightly chewy cookies studded with a fair amount of chocolate. Don't let the initial amount of butter scare you. The yield from this recipe is huge, so you may want to half the recipe for a more manageable number of cookies. The recipe is different from other chocolate chip cookie recipes that I've tried in that you melt the butter, it has a lot more egg yolks than usual, it lists the ingredients by weight, and there's a hefty amount of salt in the recipe. I added vanilla because I always do. The sugar ratio is also severely weighted towards brown sugar which gives them a nice caramel flavor after they are baked. That flavor combined with the salt in the dough might be one of my favorite things about these cookies. It's that perfect sweet-salty combo.

My biggest (and only) complaint is that these cookies baked up rather flat on my second go-round. The first time we baked the balls of dough straight out of the freezer, and the cookies seemed to retain their height a little better than when I baked the fresh dough the second time. I would be curious to see if some time in the refrigerator would help this? Either way, I've got a lot more chocolate chip cookie recipes to try although these may be the last ones I ever make if it was up to my husband =)

I've linked this post up to Sweets for Saturday! Check out all the goodies over there. Yum!

(Printable Recipe)

Top Chef: Just Desserts Chocolate Chip Cookies
Adapted from Eric Wolitzky's recipe on bravotv.com

Ingredients:
1-1/2 c. butter (3 sticks)
200 gm granulated sugar (1 cup)
400 gm brown sugar (2 very tightly packed cups)
21 ounces of flour (4-2/3 cup)
1 Tbsp. baking soda
1-3/4 tsp. table salt (recipe calls for 1 Tbsp. Kosher salt)
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla
21 ounces chocolate, chopped into chunks (I used chips - it's what we had)

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Melt the butter on the stove in a small saucepan. Allow to cool slightly. Beat sugars and melted butter until light and fluffy. Add eggs, one at a time, and mix well after each addition. In a separate bowl, mix the flour, baking soda, and salt with a whisk. Mix in by hand until just combined. Mix in chocolate chips or chunks. 

Roll dough into desired sized balls and press down slightly on the baking sheet. We liked these as larger cookies (at least tablespoon-sized balls of dough). Bake for approximately 14 minutes or until golden brown (less time if making smaller cookies). Allow to cool on the pan for a few minutes then cool completely on a wire rack. 

If desired, the dough can be frozen after rolling it into balls. Place the balls of dough on a cookie sheet so that they are not touching and freeze until solid. Store the balls of dough in a freezer-style ziploc bag until ready to use. They can be baked directly from the freezer. I do not know how long they will keep. My husband's supply lasted only a couple of weeks =)