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.
hddonna
said on November 13th, 2013:
It’s amazing how much variation there can be in the results of a recipe, even when one follows it to a T. I was interested to note that you had begun adding a little extra flour to the Toll House recipe because your cookies were coming out to thin. I had the exact same experience. I have talked to others who have had the same experience. I had used the recipe on the package my whole life (and it seems to me that in the 60’s they still said to add a teaspoon of water but they didn’t instruct you to dissolve the soda in it anymore, and eventually they dropped the water). Be that as it may, my cookies turned out perfectly for all the years until the early 2000’s, when they began to get too thin, and I started adding a little more flour. But when they didn’t spread too much, the texture was too cakey. My ideal chocolate chip cookie is chewy in the middle (not just soft), and crisp around the edges. I began trying different recipes, but every time I thought I’d finally found the perfect one, the next time I made them they turned out different. These days, I use Alice Medrich’s recipe, still with a couple of changes–more chips, as she only calls for a cup, and no walnuts, which I love but my sons do not. Medrich melts the butter, and the cookie dough can be stirred together by hand. The proportions of the other ingredients are the same as in the Toll House recipe. I can’t figure out what changed to make the Toll House recipe suddenly start turning out a different result for me. I don’t see how it can be the chips themselves, and I’ve always used all butter, and real butter. I’ve tried different flours–bread flour, King Arthur flour–but when made as shown on the package, they always spread too much.
By the way, I have the Maida Heatter cookbook referred to in your post, and love it–have made many of the recipes and never been disappointed. (Have not made the chocolate chip cookies, however!)
Yes, I agree with you completely, and I, too, don’t understand what could have changed about the making of them. One thing I’ve thought about is that regular all-purpose flour may have undergone some kind of a morph, using less gluten, or how most flour is milled? I just don’t know, either. Years ago I did use margarine – back when we all thought margarine was better for us (remember that!) and that probably could change the batter consistency. I wonder if that would make a difference; I don’t really want to make them to find out since I also use only real butter in all of my cooking and baking. I have wondered, also, if it’s the butter – butter here in the US is much more watery (fluid) than European. But when I used to be able to buy Plugra at Trader Joe’s at a good price I used it – but my recollection is that it didn’t made a whit of difference in the batter, so I’d concluded it wasn’t the butter either. Now I use Trader Joe’s unsalted butter for most of my baking. Maybe we’ll never know . . . but I’m surprised this hasn’t come up with lots of other bakers, because I’ve had several friends of mine tell me they have the same problem, cookies too thin. Oh well, maybe time will give us some answers . . . carolyn t
Kathleen Heckathorn
said on November 14th, 2013:
Hi Carolyn,
Do you think the “Do” in Drop-Do Cookies might be pronounced like Do-Re-Mi, and be short for dough, as opposed to the “dew” pronunciation that first comes to mind? Just a thought …
It’s certainly possible – sounds very logical to me, Kathleen! We may never know unless somebody else leaves a message about it! . . .carolyn t