Dear Dorie… how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love your Perfect Party Cake that has saved me oh so many times. I love your Cream Puff Ring that has made me look like a “supah-stah” (thank you Molly Shannon). I love your Chocolate Pudding that is so fantabulous that mere words cannot express the feelings of a non-choco-holic like me. Your All American All Delicious Apple Pie and Good For Almost Everything Pie Crust have challenged me… but in a good way (hey, I received a food processor after my family heard my tales of woe trying to make the crust w/o one… and they had to hear it over and over and over again! LOL). Your Apple Cheddar Scones surprised me with their goodness. Your Cocoa-Buttermilk Birthday Cake has such wonderful texture. Your Double Crusted Blueberry Pie was a big hit with my friend’s husband… a blueberry pie afficianado if ever one lived. Your Mixed-Berry Cobbler introduced this girl to the world of cobblers in general. Your Créme Brulée has wonderful silkiness and flavor that takes me back to delicious meals in wonderful restaurants of Paris. And among all those winners, my love for your Best Chocolate Chip Cookies eh, not so much.
Sorry Dorie. You know I love you. But for me these cookies were a major league, grade A, full on disappointment.
I feel so bad about this cuz all of you know I have mad, fierce, wicked-love for my girl Dorie Greenspan. I gotta keep it real and tell ya these chocolate chip cookies were a tremendous flop for me. I wanted to love them… really, I did. But me no likey a flat chocolate chip cookie.
My go-to has always been to use half-butter and half-butter flavor Crisco (shortening) in any chocolate chip cookie recipe that uses butter as it’s only fat. Now yeah, I know, some folks poo-poo shortening. To each their own. No one who’s ever eaten my cookies has complained or spit them out. That’s cuz they taste goooooooood :) When I made the Double Chocolate Chunk Peanut Butter Chip cookies the night before, the recipe upon which I based it called for all butter… and they weren’t ridiculously uber-flat, alien-looking cookies… so I had hope… I had faith that an all butter chocolate chip cookie recipe didn’t have to be flat! Granted, those were flatter than I like but… sadly… my hopes were dashed in using Dorie’s all butter chocolate chip cookie recipe. These were the best looking of the 2-3 dozen cookies made :(
I didn’t have a boat-load of useable chocolate so I kind of improvised by using a combination of semi-sweet chocolate chunks… along with some Hershey’s Chocolate Marshmallow Kisses to reach the needed amount of chocolate.
Hershey’s is now making all sorts of varieties of their “Kisses”… and when I find interesting ones, I buy them. Rarely do I have a clue just what I’ll use them for but hey, chocolate of any variety will never go to waste in my household… DJ and his kids love it too much :)
Chocolate chip cookies are very personal. Some folks like ‘em crispy… others like ‘em chewy. Some folks like ‘em flat… others like ‘em tall. With the exception of using Marshmallow chocolate for SOME of the chocolate called for, I followed Dorie’s recipe to a T. I don’t play around with her recipes the first time… I like to baseline the first time against the recipe as written. I can think of no reason my cookies looked like this:
And what is up with the concentric circles? Do they tell the age of the cookie like the rings of a tree-trunk? LOL I dunno. I just dunno. But I know that I followed the recipe and ended up with a disappointing result.
Sorry Dorie… you know I love ya girl… but this chocolate chip cookie recipe, well, not so much.
Since I believe that Dorie wrote her book not only to share her lovely recipes but to also make a dime, I won’t post her Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe here. I will, however, encourage you to buy her book Baking From My Home To Yours which is featured on the book-list on the right side of my page. You won’t regret it!! Or I supposed you could always search the internet… some else has probably already posted it. But hey, support the publishing industry… and buy the book!!
Have a delicious day :)
The hersheys kisses may have caused the cookies to spread too much. The circles look like the cookie puffed up and the flattened out. Herysheys kisses probably have hydrogenated fats that are similar to shortening, so maybe too much fat in the recipe. Or too much baking soda if there was any.
Em, I just posted about my love affair with the NY Times chocolate chip cookies (on Dorie’s blog 2 weeks ago) and published my version of the recipe. You might want to try them – either my recipe or the original. I hate flat cookies, too!
Oops. Not sure if my blog link worked on that last comment or not: http://kittymamabakes.blogspot.com.
I don’t care for flat chocolate chip cookies either. I like them soft and chewy. Best ones I have had yet are the original Toll House cookies!!!!!
hahahaha…i laughed and laughed at this (my hub thought i was losing it…) me no likey flat cookies either. i made these a few weeks ago and was so disappointed i couldn’t bare to blog about them!
try thr malted milk cookies though – i just ate a hot one out of the oven – super YUM!!
I don’t know – I made the espresso variation of these and used mini chocolate chips and got the same sort of result. I had to underbake them though so they stayed chewy instead of crisp. Luckily, most of her other recipes are foolproof so I can forgive her this once :)
The first pic made me look. The last pic made me think of cow pies.
I think it was the use of substandard chocolate in this recipe.
I’m so jealous of your thin cookies!! My chocolate chip cookies end up rising up instead of spreading so I always have to flatten them before baking. I love thick and chewy CCC’s, but I also love thin and crispy. Too bad I have yet to bake the thin and crispy’s.
Try adding about a tbs or so more flour. It does that because it rises up but the batter isn’t solid enough to hold the air so it escapes and collapses with those rings. Alternatively, too much flour or baking soda/ammonia gets what steph described.
I bet they still tasted good! :)
I’m just glad that I’m not the only one this happens to! LOL
They’d be great for ice cream sandwiches though.
I have to say…thank you thank you thank you…. I may be a freak but I LOVE thin crispy cookies….they are my favorite. I saw these on foodgawker and got so excited. Just goes to show, one persons flop is another persons favorite!!!!!
I’ll try these this week and let you know if i get the same result. Thanks again.
Ugh. I made these too– with chocolate that wasn’t substandard– and they still feel flat and sucked. I’ve made a lot of chocolate chip cookies in my day and these definitely didn’t hit top ten.
These do look nasty and very disappointing–flat chocolate chip cookies are from the devil! I have never been able to make a quality CCC–something was always wrong,the texture, the flavor, so I’ve shamefully cheated with a certain chubby, giggly chef. However, I determined I would try again yesterday–and I triumphed with Cooks Illustrated CCC recipe–it is an all butter recipe, but it doesn’t spread at all! The cookies are soft, chewy, HUGE, Fabulous! If you don’t belong to their recipe archive, email me–I’ll get you the recipe! You won’t be disappointed again. nashx2@comcast.net
C’mon cookie people, different strokes for different folks here. I, too, love a thick, soft-centered, slightly underdone chocolate chip cookie. I’ve baked cookies for bakeries and met the customers and guess what? There are people out there who simply swoon over a thin, crisp, chipper with those funny concentric ridges. Try her thin cookie recipe with lots of fresh grated lemon zest added…. AAaauuurrghh (chocolate-lemon ecstasy)
So I’m wondering, did you refrigerate the dough before baking the cookies? It can make a huge difference. Keep up the good work.
I just had to post that I made these today and had the same disappointing experience (except for the tree trunk part). I don’t like flat chocolate chip cookies, either. I never thought a Dorie recipe would let me down. I thought perhaps I did something wrong, but I followed the recipe to a T.