Pretty cookies with caramelized flavor

This cookie recipe

Starting your cookies under the broiler/grill.

It results uncommonly pretty cookies with some caramelized flavor in the flakey top. I've been trying to refine my old recipe lately, and here it is, with precise measurements this time. A stick, 113g unsalted butter. Just melt it down in the microwave. You could brown the butter — some people who aren't me really like the taste of that — but be aware that browning also boils off the like 15% of butter that is water, so you'll either need to add a little water or reduce the flour a bit. 200g of sugar. For granulated sugar that would be one cup, but I'm using powdered sugar which makes for a slight improvement in appearance.

You get a smoother surface on the cookie. It doesn't make a huge difference — don't go out of your way to find powdered sugar for this. Try brown sugar, for flavor — or drop in a little dab of molasses because brown sugar is just sugar plus a little molasses. Give that a preliminary beating, mostly to lower the temperature of the butter, in case the butter is so hot that it's gonna prematurely cook the egg. Beat that egg in. If you're using granulated sugar, you can get a similar effect to what I'm getting here by just beating for an extra couple minutes at this stage, let the sugar dissolve a bit in the water from the egg — and the butter. Nice, pudding-like texture that, from the powdered sugar — and from the fact that I didn't get my butter super hot. If the butter was hotter, the mixture would be runnier at this stage.

That doesn't really matter either way, it's just a good cautionary note about judging the content of a dough by its consistency — something I probably do a little too much. I like a whole teaspoon of this kosher salt. The kind of salt only matters in as much as different salts will measure out differently by volume. 10g is what I like, which is gonna be noticeably salty. You might like less. You know, I used to advocate baking powder, but after testing it, I think I prefer simple baking soda — in chewy cookies, at least. For cakey cookies you want the baking powder, which has an acid and a base. Baking soda is just the base.

Half a teaspoon of that, maybe 3g. It's a subtle thing, but baking soda just tastes a little better here. Acid does inhibit browning. Everything in me is saying just slosh in some vanilla, but I'm measuring it out for you. Let's say, two teaspoons vanilla extract, which is how much? "8 grams.". There you go. You might like less vanilla. Some people say I put in too much.

Having tested it side by side, I really do think these come out better with bread flour. Bread flour makes chewier cookies, browner cookies, but all-purpose flour is OK. This 00 flour is super-finely ground, which again gets you a nicer, smoother top.

Flour grind doesn't matter that much to

This, but it's nice.

And in all my experiments I determined the best quantity of flour relative to a stick of butter is 230g, which is about a cup and a half — of bread flour. AP flour is lighter so it measures out differently. Mix that up nice and smooth. Honestly, even going by weight has been hit and miss for me as far as getting.

THE perfect cookies goes. Higher protein flour absorbs more water, etc etc. Measuring by weight can lull you into a false sense of security. The key here is enough flour that the dough is about that sticky. If it's not sticky at all, you're gonna get taller, drier, kinda scone-like cookies. That would happen, by the way, if you boiled out all the butter water and didn't lower the flour accordingly. If it's way more sticky, the cookies will spread super thin in the oven. I find that if it feels just a little too sticky to me, it's perfect.

And you could put in chocolate chips or whatever but today I'm putting in M&Ms, just for funsies, and a hundred grams is the right amount of any chocolate for me. That's proportionally less chocolate than what the classic Toll House recipe calls for, but Toll House is in the business of selling chocolate chips, so what do you expect? Since the dough is a little sticky, you can make it easier to shape by chilling it in the fridge for a bit, make it more solid. But based on my recent experiments, the fridge makes no difference in how the cookies actually bake. I usually bake cookies on parchment paper, but the paper does burn a little with this method and that makes a nasty smell, so I'm going bare pan today. If you care that much about precision, 115g each is a good weight for half a dozen big cookies. I just roll them out into golf balls first. No nonstick spray on the pan, by the way. With these cookies at least, the spray does almost nothing to inhibit sticking and it gives a slight fried flavor to the base.

Now I go back and flatten each ball into a little puck. You can skip this, but they bake prettier and more evenly if they start as pucks. And if you really care about aesthetics you can refine the circles a bit before baking. I've had my oven heating already to 375ºF/190ºC, convection. But I will immediately turn that off and turn the broiler on high. What the Brits call a grill is up here at the top, it heats up in a minute or two, and if you don't have one — just bake the cookies normally, it's gonna be fine. Under my broiler, this stage 90 seconds, tops. Once you have golden brown domes that will crack in attractive patterns as the cookies spread, get them out fast before they burn.

If you have multiple pans of cookies, brown them one-at-time. It'll go real fast. Now I'll turn the broiler off and the convection bake back on. Give the broiler a minute or two to cool down. The oven itself is already at the right temperature because we pre-heated.

Yes, the word "pre-heat" has valid use

Cases and i just gave you one, pedants.

If you don't have a convection fan

Blowing in there, you're gonna be fine.

Just maybe rotate the pans halfway through to help them bake more evenly.

Conventional ovens have hot spots that the fan helps to even out. And the fan accelerates baking a bit. These only needed like eight more minutes. For the texture I like, I pull them when they look just a hair under-baked, and that is that. So, the broiler-then-bake procedure that I invented accidentally one day when I turned on the broiler instead of the oven, which I meant to turn on — I think this replicates the look of a bake done in a professional steam-injection oven. The steam gels the outer starch layer and gets you that smooth effect. That's just my guess. Let these cool and solidify before you try to scrape them off the pan.