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Anyone have a competition-winning cookie recipe?
I need a really good recipe to win a baking competition this upcoming week. It doesn't matter if its hard to make or the ingredients are a little more expensive than usual. Anyone have a top-tier cookie recipe they'd be willing to share?
There's loads of recipes out there and I don't keep track of the ones I use so what I would do is find a recipe you like the sound of, then modify in the following way:
Upgrade additions such as chocolate and vanilla to the best quality you can find/afford.
Don't buy chocolate chips, cut up a bar of chocolate into chunks from small to big.
Change out butter for brown butter.
Make your dough the day before baking and leave it to rest for 24 hours in the fridge.
Sprinkle your cookies with smoked sea salt before baking.
Personally I like milk chocolate, vanilla and salt. But I don't like dark chocolate, among bakers, dark might go down better. It's a bit more grown up!
Thanks for the tips! I was hoping maybe something outside the normal chocolate chip (chunk) recipe to try and gain an edge. Do you think the brown butter/day-before-dough/sea salt would work for other cookie recipes, or is that really a complement to the chocolate?
I would say that the brown butter and overnight should work with most flavours, although perhaps not the brown butter if you're doing something super delicate in terms of flavour. I usually find a little extra salt really enhances sweet things but again, there's likely some flavours it just wouldn't work on.
Maybe if you're doing something quite delicate, like matcha and white chocolate, only overnight the dough rather than doing the rest.
Pro tip for overnight cookies (and good uniformity, which is a judging point): Use a portioning scoop that has a mechanical release, like this one. They come in different capacities, so you'll need to estimate sizing based on your recipe's recommendations for portion per cookie, e.g. 1 tbsp = 1/2 oz, and so on. They're also great just to have around the kitchen for doing super-fast prep.
Unlike the picture, you don't want to drop rounded balls of dough. Scrape the scoop along the side of the bowl to remove excess, so that you're depositing hemispheres of dough on the sheet pan, then refrigerate overnight. When those hemispheres bake, you'll get cookies that are uniformly chewy or crunchy (depending on what the recipe calls for) without too much variation.
If you want to upgrade your chocolate game, try chopping high-quality bar or block chocolate with an 8 - 10" chef's knife. There's a trick to this for block chocolate. You'll need to put the knife edge about 1/2" in from the edge of the block, and press down hard with one hand on the spine of the blade, rocking the handle down until the 1/2" thick piece breaks off. Then you can chop the piece finer as needed. When you're adding your chopped chocolate, be sure to scrape up all the fine shavings and add them to the dough as well - they'll create a nice speckled look and help harmonize the cookie's flavor.
Some good tips here already - the other thing you can do is search for a levain style recipe. Levain is a baker in NY that makes more cakeish like chocolate chip cookies. They’re somewhat dissimilar to traditional chocolate chip, but they are delicious. Especially for people who like chewier cookies over crisp cookies.
A few years back there was a blog that proclaimed it had developed The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie and they showed their work - multiple batches with tweaks like brown sugar vs white sugar, etc. You might google them and give the results a try, probably no one judging the competition remembers the blog. If nothing else it'll give you an idea of how to approach swapping out ingredients.
Mat really has the right idea - find a recipe you like, and upgrade the ingredients, and/or swap out a single ingredient for something else. Try buckwheat flour instead of wheat for a gingerbread snap (or a mix of buckwheat and regular flour - things can change dramatically in baking ratios). If a recipe calls for cinnamon, try adjacent spices instead like anise. You got a favorite lemon bar recipe? Try making it with blood oranges instead. Look at fancy chocolate bars to see what's being sold with what fillings/nuts/fruits - tried and tested taste combos there. Wander through a high end grocery store, an ethnic grocery store, or even Whole Foods and pick an unfamiliar (dried) fruit or nut to experiment with. Look at their snacks and see what flavor combinations they use that maybe your competition won't be hip to.
If you can make durian work in a cookie, you're going to go down in history...though since you're asking here for an award winning recipe, that might be a stretch goal for the distant future.
If you want a technically challenging bake, go for macarons. (Not macaroons)
I believe that the blog you are referring to was Kenji Alt López's chocolate chip cookie recipe. That guy has a really enjoyable writing experience and shows how things change the recipe.
You also may want to try keeping the cookies overnight an additional day, I believe between 36-48 hours was the spot where things were rated the most delicious) enjoyable!
You might be right! Though judging by the age of the oldest comments, it's more than a few years old lmao. What is time?
Use a flat baking sheet, don't use a tray with a lip. Don't use silpats, and don't use silicone baking parchment. Preheat the oven, but do not preheat the tray.
I like Sheldo's chocolate chip upgrade - although he's using chocolate chips and I agree with what other people have said, use good chocolate that you chop into chunks.
America's Test Kitchen has a nice short video about what can help make a good cookie.
Yes! I love these cookies AND they actually won an award: they were the Ladies' Home Journal 1983 grand prize winner.
"Simple Sesame Cookies"
Ingredients:
2 cups butter
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 cups flour
1 cup sesame seeds
2 cups shredded coconut
1/2 cup finely chopped almonds
Directions:
In a large mixer, cream butter. Add sugar. Beat until light and fluffy.
Add flour. Mix until just combined.
Stir in sesame seeds, coconut, and almonds until just well mixed.
Divide dough into thirds. Place on long sheet of waxed paper and shape into a long roll 2 inches in diameter.
Refrigerate until firm (over night).
Preheat oven until 300 degrees. Cut rolls into 1/4 inch slices. Each roll of dough makes 16 cookies.
Bake for 30 minutes. Let cool 5 minutes on sheet and then transfer to a wire rack.
Makes about 4 dozen cookies.
No competition experience, but I'd like to throw in these hazelnut cookies by Stella Parks as some of my absolute favourites. Her recipes are excellent in general, too.