Something special: Seeking the best chocolate chip cookies
Important cookie research, optimal baking chocolate, recipes, and a cute cat photo
My husband has a clever trick that always results in sampling sweet treats.
The first time was when he got into a spirited debate with my brothers about the precise cross-sections of Snickers and Milky Way bars. There was no consensus on content or the stratification of the ingredients (there was also a dearth of chocolate at my parent’s house where this took place). They drew schematics based on memory and then made a quick trip to the 7-11 to buy some candy bars for research purposes. We sliced the bars as a geologist would slice a precious rock, analyzed whether they matched the schematics or not, and then ate the specimens.
This time around, the trick began with a question: Does The Cheese Shop [Concord, MA], still have the best chocolate chip cookies? That led to an investigation and securing an adequate sample, again for research purposes.
Palate & Palette have sampled a lot of chocolate chip cookies and we have well-developed opinions.
Objectively speaking, there are various chocolate chip cookie camps: cakey or crispy? Chocolate chunks or chips? Dark or milk chocolate? Sprinkle of sea salt on top? Then there are variations involving coconut oil or shortening instead of butter (not recommended), different grainy flours (a little can be interesting, too much not recommended), nuts or raisins (not recommended because they compete with the chocolate, rather than having a conversation with it), or preparations that require the baker to slam the pan against the counter (haven’t tried it because this would be very scary to our cats).
We are fortunate that our friend Susan continues her chocolate chip cookie recipe research and often needs tasters. Her current favorites are a Jacques Torres recipe, Joanne Chang’s, and David Lebovitz’s salted chocolate chip tahini cookies. She says the quality of chocolate matters and likes Guittard extra dark 63% chips, Valrohna dark chocolate, and Guittard bittersweet wafers. She also chops up bars, such as the Trader Joe’s 72% chocolate and the Ritter Sport 50% dark chocolate bars.
But if you don’t have a friend like Susan, we can confirm that the Concord Cheese Shop (sorry, readers outside the metropolitan Boston area) still gets it just right: the perfect ratio of chocolate chunks to batter, baked golden brown but not overly crispy. Chef Justin Kopaz says the cookies are from a Ghirardelli recipe and the chocolate chunks are from Callebaut.
Justin bakes 10 to 24 of them a day, depending on the day and the season, which means that he’s baked about 114,000 over 20 years serving as The Cheese Shop chef. Surprisingly, the cookies are not the best-selling item the kitchen makes. That would be the chicken salad. They sell 4,000 pounds of it a year.
We were ready to declare the Cheese Shop cookies the reigning champion, but then we tried Levain Bakery’s two chip chocolate chip cookies. The bakery was started in New York City by two friends who conceived of their original cookies as snacks for their triathlon training. So that makes these cookies virtuous, right?
Levain Bakery recently opened a small shop on Boston’s fashionable Newbury Street. When we visited, there were four types of cookies, a banana chocolate chip loaf cake, and baguettes for sale. The two chip chocolate chip cookies are mounded almost like muffins, and based on their height, they shouldn’t work because you would expect the centers to be undercooked. Yet they are crispy, chocolatey, delightfully messy, and baked just right. They are called “two chip” because they feature two different types of chocolate chips to add…chocolateyness.
I wouldn’t say these are better than the Cheese Shop cookies, because they are a different species of cookie (like a hawk and an owl), and we absolutely need to do more research.
Where to find these cookies:
The Cheese Shop, 29 Walden St., Concord MA
Levain Bakery, locations in New York, Boston, Washington, DC, and Bethesda, MD, and mail order.
Want to bake your own versions of these cookies?
Ghirardelli Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies
Levain Bakery-Style Super-Thick Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe: This article explains the ingredients and techniques needed to produce these special, super-thick cookies.
What is your favorite place to get a chocolate chip cookie? Or, if you bake them, what’s your go-to recipe? Share in the comments!
Great article! I am known for mine-- I perfected my recipe from a Martha Stewart article on cake versus crunchy cookie. My recipe is very similar to the Ghirardelli one but I use two sticks of Kerrygold salted butter, I only use 1/4 cup brown sugar, only a 1/2 tsp baking soda but add 1/2 tsp baking powder which makes the cookie more cakie and buttery! I never measure the chips but pour in enough to have generous chocolate in each one. Sometimes I remember to add sea salt on top but not usually. I also use a small cookie scooper and I bake them for 9 minutes at 350, open and check on them... either leave them for three more minutes and if they are getting brown around the bottom, take them out... or let them bake another 1-2 minutes if not. Then let them cool for 2 minutes on the pan to firm up before going to the wire cooling rack! They never last for more than a 24 hour period at my house!😜
My favorite chocolate chip cookie is at Alexandra's in Gloucester MA ~ They make what I call a 'million dollar cookie' ~ with chocolate chips, coconut, nuts and is the BEST!