There are thousands of chocolate chip cookie recipes out there, and for good reason. Cookies only require a few ingredients, but there are tons of ways to tweak those ingredients in the search for the perfect chocolate chip cookie.
For example, I’ve found that using more flour makes cookies tougher. Browning the butter and using chocolate chips creates the bakery-style cookie we all love. Add just a touch of water? This makes them thinner and crispier.
My personal search for the ideal chocolate chip cookie is so endless that I recently pitted two popular cookies with very similar basic ingredients against each other.
I already know and love the classic Nestlé Toll House chocolate chip cookiesbut how does it compare to Ree Drummond’s Chocolate Chip Cookies? And one of the recipes is titled “ The only chocolate chip cookie recipe you’ll ever need?
Easy Recipes / Meghan Splawn
Nestlé Toll House chocolate chip cookies
I’ve made this recipe more times than I can count. It’s the base for almost every other chocolate chip cookie recipe.
I started by creaming softened butter with equal amounts of brown sugar and granulated sugar. Then I added two eggs and a teaspoon of vanilla extract to the mixture. Then I folded in the dry ingredients: all-purpose flour, baking powder and salt. Finally, I stirred in the Nestlé Toll House semisweet chocolate chips.
The dough is scooped into “rounded tablespoons.” I used a tablespoon and a half cookie scoop and baked them on an ungreased baking sheet at 375°F for nine to eleven minutes.
Ree Drummond’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
After baking and cooling, the cookies look homemade: small, with rough edges and bumpy tops. The texture is soft in the middle with a delicate, crisp edge. They taste buttery and a little too sweet, but the tiny chips kept that at bay – a four-bite cookie at best, and a very nostalgic one.
Like the Toll House recipe, Ree Drummond’s version starts with softened butter and equal amounts of brown and granulated sugar, but Ree uses 2/3 cup of each instead of 3/4 cup.
Again, two eggs are added to the butter mixture, but this cookie calls for a full tablespoon of vanilla extract. The cookie dough uses the same amount of flour, baking powder and salt, but instead of chips, Drummond calls for 8 ounces of chopped semisweet chocolate and 4 ounces of chopped dark chocolate.
These cookies are scooped into quarter-sized rounds, six of which are placed in a baking pan lined with parchment paper, and sprinkled with a pinch of flaky salt before refrigerating. Yes, these cookies need to be chilled for at least 20 minutes before baking.
Although the cookies are larger and chilled, they are baked at a lower oven temperature of 350°F for 17 to 19 minutes.
The finished cookies are beautiful! A lightly puffed flavor topped with glossy chocolate salmon. The texture is soft like a cake, and there is a generous edge of crispy cookies as they are almost four times the size of Toll House cookies.
The winner: Ree Drummond’s Chocolate Chip Cookies
Although I love Nestlé Tollhouse’s classic cookie, I admit that Ree’s cookie base was more buttery and less sweet, in a good way, with a little less sugar. This, coupled with the combination of dark and semisweet chocolate, kept me from getting bored with the flavor of the cookies despite their larger size.
The additional efforts in Ree’s cookieChopping the chocolate, chilling the dough rounds, and baking fewer cookies per sheet resulted in a satisfying impact on the taste, texture, and appearance of the finished cookie.
Next time I make these I might opt for semi-sweet pieces to appease my dark chocolate hating kids, but These chocolate chip cookies are the new standard in my house.
Easy Recipes / Meghan Splawn
