Have you ever just stopped and thought to yourself “Man I really want some chocolate chip cookies”. Well, I have. Just now.

I had just finished cleaning out my 12 year old son’s closet and it hit me. Chocolate. Chip. Cookies.

I wanted to try something different, something other than the tried and true Toll House recipe, but didn’t really want to veer away from that wonderful comfort food, so I landed somewhere in between. I opened Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa Parties! Ideas and Recipes for Easy Parties That Are Really Fun that I checked out from the library a couple of weeks ago. I had these cookies, and several other recipes, earmarked to make, so today was the perfect day.

The recipe is that of a basic chocolate chip cookie with a couple of twists and turns. Instead of chocolate chips you use chocolate chunks. Ina’s recipe calls for 1 1/4 pounds, but I only had an 11 oz bag, so that’s what I used. Also, instead of table salt, this recipe uses Kosher salt, and the eggs called for are extra large instead of the standard large. There also seems to be more vanilla in this recipe than most and a little less flour. After mixing everything up, the dough seemed a little on the thin side to me.

After using a cookie scoop to drop the dough onto parchment lined cookie sheets, you wet your fingers and gently push the dough down a bit. Then it’s into the oven for 15 minutes exactly, no more, as the recipe says you need to undercook them just a bit to get that lovely, chewy texture. Umm… 15 minutes?? Most chocolate chip cookie recipes that I know are 8-11 minutes, does this seem awful long to you too?

Well it was. At least in my opinion.

The picture in the book has a stack of cookies, several different types, and they are all fairly flat. Some are pretty light brown too. Problem is, there’s no text identifying which cookie is which, so I don’t know if this is what they are supposed to look like or not. I’m leaning toward NOT.

These look way overdone to me, and certainly not slightly underdone as indicated in the book. A taste test proved that they were not hard, at least not yet as they have only been out of the oven for ten minutes or so.

However there was a very slight burnt taste, though no indications of being burnt (i.e. black bottoms, etc).

So the next pan I put in I baked for only 10 minutes. These are considerably lighter, and a couple appear to be slightly underdone, but I’m still not convinced we are where we are supposed to be.

A taste test proves these are considerably better than the batch before, and the chocolate is still gooey.

So the third pan went in for 8 minutes. Oh now these look much better! Much lighter in color and still a little puffy, not completely flat like its predecessors. Problem is I am starting to feel sick from too many taste tests of the previous batches. So no more taste tests for now.

I put the last batch in for 7 minutes to see if it would improve on the third pan, which I think were pretty darn good. Hmm. VERY light. Can one minute really make that big of a difference? Closed the oven and added 30 seconds to timer. Still too underdone. 30 seconds more. Well there we are at 8 minutes and they are still lighter than the 8 minute batch, most likely from the door being opened so many times. So in the photo below I’ve indicated the last cookie as 7.5 minutes instead of 8 (just in case you care). :-/

The final verdict – would I make these again? No, probably not. Were they good? Sure, they were, nothing spectacular, but if you like flat cookies these are for you. I don’t. I like puffy, chewy chocolate chip cookies. Will they go to waste? No way. Not with 4 kids in the house and a husband who thinks chocolate chip cookies should have their own food group. :)

My opinion, not enough flour means flat cookies. This just didn’t have enough. The flavor is quite good, but I just don’t like flat chocolate chip cookies. These were visually unappealing to me, which in my opinion, is half the draw of baked goods :)

I also wonder if using the cookie scoop caused part of the problem. According to the directions below, Ina says to use a 1 3/4″ diameter ice cream scoop OR rounded tablespoons. Maybe mine were just too small but dang, how big were these cookies supposed to be anyway?? I got about 48 cookies and the book says it’ll yield 36-40. So I really don’t think that made too big of a difference.

Ok, that’s enough of that. Back to cleaning closets, the cravings have been satisfied. ;)

Chocolate Chunk Cookies
p. 235 Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa’s Parties

1/2 pound unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 tsp pure vanilla extract
2 extra large eggs at room temperature
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts (I omitted)
1 1/4 pounds semisweet chocolate chunks

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, then the eggs, one at a time, and mix well. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt and add to the butter with the mixer on low speed, mixing only until combined. Fold in walnuts and chocolate chunks.

Drop dough on baking sheets lined with parchment, using a 1 3/4 inch diameter ice cream scoop or a rounded tablespoon. Dampen hands and flatten dough slightly. Bake exactly 15 minutes, the cookies will seem underdone. Remove from oven and let cool slightly on the pan, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.