Before I tell you about these cookies, let me just say I didn’t name them – Maida Heatter did. And she certainly is the doyenne of all things baking, desserts and chocolate!
Whenever I write up a post about a famous chef or cook (or baker in this case) – like Maida Heatter – I go online to read a bit more about the person’s background. Apparently Craig Claiborne helped her career, early on, after she’d gotten a degree in fashion design. In time she became one of the finest experts in baking, and authored many cookbooks. I own two - chocolate desserts and one about cookies. Here’s a quote I found online:
“Happiness is baking cookies. Happiness is giving them away. And serving them, and eating them, talking about them, reading and writing about them, thinking about them, and sharing them with you.” . . . Maida Heatter
Don’t you just love that? This recipe came from Heatter’s chocolate cookbook – Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts. And I decided to make these simply because of the cookie title. Who, unless she was very confident about her skills
You know most of it, probably, about Ruth Wakefield, who with her husband bought an old staging station that was a toll house – they remodeled it as an inn and restaurant, and called it Toll House. Apparently there was a popular cookie at the time called a Butter Drop-Do. What a name. A drop-do? I’m LOLing here. How could anyone in her right mind call a cookie a drop-do? (I went online and did a search, just for curiosity – nothing.) Anyway, Wakefield decided to add chocolate bits to it and called them Toll House cookies. A legend was born.
The main ingredients are the same as what you see on the back of the Toll House chocolate chip bag, but there are a few differences: (1) the baking soda is dissolved in hot water and added to the wet batter (which is something Ruth Wakefield did, but later revised the recipe and eliminated that step); (2) 2 cups of chopped walnuts are added (instead of 1 cup); and (3) in the newer edition, apparently, Heatter changed the vanilla portion to 2 tsp rather than 1. There are also a few differences in the way it’s mixed – you whip up the butter alone (without sugar) until it’s light and fluffy, then you add the eggs and vanilla and whip that a bit. Then you add the sugars. Meanwhile you mix the baking soda and water, and add half the flour, the soda, then the balance of flour. You mix it just until incorporated, then you stir in the chips and nuts.
Heatter also uses a slightly different technique for the baking – she recommends refrigerating the dough first (which is what Wakefield used to do) – and found that the cookies held their shape better. She would create little mounds of dough and would roll them in damp hands, then once on the baking sheet she’d flatten them slightly. I didn’t refrigerate the dough – but I did use my cookie scoop to create the mound and slightly pressed the flat of my fingers on top to flatten each one slightly. That made a more evenly baked (browned) cookie. The first batch I made (and I didn’t take that extra step) had fairly extra-brown edges. Not a problem, really, other than appearance.
So, if you bothered to read all of the above – Heatter uses the basic recipe, but makes a few changes. She adds more nuts and the texture of these cookies is slightly different. Some years ago I began adding a tablespoon or 2 of extra flour to the old Toll House recipe because my cookies were always too thin. I sure didn’t have that trouble here – so perhaps it was the soda dissolving that made a difference. I don’t know. But these cookies sat right up and stayed there through the baking.
What’s GOOD: easy, good texture, reliable flavor. This is a softer cookie (I actually prefer a crisp cookie if I have a choice). Even eaten from a frozen state, they have a soft texture. Only another brand of chocolate chip could make much of a taste difference (I now buy Kirkland brand – I think they’re almost as good as Nestle’s). I don’t know that I’d go so far as to say these are the absolute best CC cookies out there – to me it almost always comes down to a texture thing – if they’re soft, I’m not much of a fan. But if that floats your boat, try this version – you might find them superior.
What’s NOT: nothing that I can think of.
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Maida Heatter’s Positively-the-Absolute-Best Chocolate Chip Cookies
Recipe By: From Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts
Serving Size: 55
8 ounces unsalted butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons vanilla extract — (I always err on the up side – original calls for 1 tsp)
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup light brown sugar — firmly packed
2 large eggs
2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour — unsifted
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon hot water
2 cups walnuts — cut or broken into medium-size pieces
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Cut aluminum foil to fit cookie sheets.
2. Cream the butter in a mixer. Add the salt, vanilla and both sugars and beat well. Add the eggs and beat well. Lower the speed of the mixer and add about half of the flour and beat only until incorporated. In a small cup stir the baking soda with the hot water until it is dissolved. Mix it into the dough. Add the remaining flour and beat only to mix. Remove the bowl from the mixer and stir in the chocolate and the nuts.
3. There are various methods for forming the dough. You can simply drop the batter from a teaspoon or you can chill the dough overnight (Ruth Wakefield did this). Maida prefers forming the dough into balls with your wet hands. She says they will have a more even color and taste better. Whichever method you choose, place the dough 2 inches apart on the foil and slightly flatten the top with a spoon or your fingertips.
4. Bake for about 12-14 minutes until the cookies have browned all over. If using only one cookie sheet, use the upper rack. If using two sheets, reverse them from top to bottom and front to back half-way through the baking time.
5. Let the cookies cool for a few seconds before transferring them to a cooling rack. Store in an airtight container.
Per Serving: 126 Calories; 8g Fat (54.2% calories from fat); 2g Protein; 13g Carbohydrate; 1g Dietary Fiber; 17mg Cholesterol; 66mg Sodium.