In this hot weather I'm willing to chill anything (myself included) and chocolate chip cookie dough is no exception. In today's New York Times dining section David Leite provides some keys to successful chocolate chip cookies, one of which comes from the 1953 edition of the Toll House Cook Book. Unlike the recipe featured on the Toll House chocolate chip packages, the cookbook suggests you chill the dough overnight which, according to Leite, produces a drier dough, more even browning, and vastly improved taste. Leite claimed the cookies that had rest in the fridge for 36 hours had a stronger toffee flavor and a more pronounced brown sugar taste. It's definitely a tip worth broadcasting, but since the Times didn’t provide Ms. Wakefield’s original recipe, I’ll do it for you.
Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies
(as written in the Toll House Cook Book)
Cream
1 cup butter. Add
¾ cup brown sugar
¾ cup white sugar class
2 eggs, beaten. Dissolve
1t. soda in
1t. hot water. Add alternately with
2 ¼ cups flour sifted with
1t. salt. Add
1 cup chopped nuts
2 packages semisweet chocolate morsels
1t. vanilla
Drop by half teaspoons onto greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 10 to 12 minutes. Makes 100 cookies.
At Toll House, we chill this dough overnight. When ready for baking, we roll a teaspoon of dough between palms of hands and place balls 2 inches apart on greased baking sheet. Then we press balls with finger tips to form flat rounds. This way cookies do not spread as much in the baking and they keep uniformly round. They should be brown through, and crispy, not white and hard as I have sometimes seen them.
>> Keep in mind that the Library also has some earlier editions of Toll House cookbooks, if anyone is interested in other recipes coming out of Wakefield's kitchen.
