The REAL Pursuit of Happiness

We all dream of it; late at night, in our fantasies, life’s ultimate offering: the perfect chocolate chip cookie. I know this isn’t the first chocolate chip cookie investigation, nor will it be the last, but it is a quest I’ve always dreamed of venturing on. I know this is something a teenager should not be this excited about, but my lack of a social life makes this all the more thrilling. I’m planning on doing a two-part experimentation ultimately pursuing the ultimate, perfect, milk-dipping worthy chocolate chip cookie.

Part A of the testing will include four different recipes from around the web, adapted when needed, that exploit, in my opinion, the four genres of cookies: flat and crispily caramelized, chewy and bordering under-baked,  fluffy and soft-textured, and lastly... the giant, crunchy yet chewy, chocolate chunk  cookie.

After condensing my research and adapting where necessary, I’ve got my four base recipes:

1.        For the first, I’m using a brown-butter base, melted instead of the traditional creamed butter, more white sugar than brown (white sugar makes it crispier, brown sugar chewier), and less flour .

2.       For the chewy, I’ll basically the opposite- more brown sugars, creamed butter, drop the baking temperature to 325 and most likely the normal amount of flour.

3.       For fluffy, bakers advise using cornstarch instead of baking soda or powder as the leavener, and I’m also going to use one extra egg along with cake flour in place of all-purpose.

4.       The giant will be a mix of the crispy and chewy, large amounts of chocolate (always a good idea) and 1/3-cup scoops of dough.

Part B will take the winner of this experiment and delve into the deep roots of the ingredients, hopefully yielding the perfect and most incredible chocolate cookie ever made…. But we’ll get to that part later.

I’m way too excited for this. I know, I need to get out more, blah, blah, blah, but hopefully my passion for fantastic chocolate chip cookies (and cookies in general) will jumpstart the revolution that could make or break my entire career- based on this one recipe. You never know.

Stay tuned, kids. Wish me luck!