Super-Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies (KA Recipe of the Year)

Super-Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies is King Arthur Baking's 2024 Recipe of the Year. Unlike other chocolate chip cookie recipes, this year's winner is unconventional in ingredients and technique. These deviations produce an extraordinary cookie worthy of the recipe of the year designation.

I'm a huge fan of the King Arthur Baking site and its recipes. In fact, I don't think I've been disappointed by a single recipe that I've tried from the site. This recipe is no exception.

Normally in my blog posts, I detail the preparation of my recipes. This time, I thought it would be helpful to detail and somewhat review the King Arthur recipe.

Jump to:

• What is Different About This Recipe
• The Ingredients - Here's What You'll Need
• Steps - Making the Cookie Dough
• Baking the Cookies
• My Conclusion
• Recipe

What is Different About This Recipe

Over the years, I've made a lot of different chocolate chip cookie recipes. The procedure and the ingredients used in making these recipes were basically the same from one recipe to another. It was only variations on a theme that differed.

This King Arthur recipe includes some notable differences from the typical chocolate chip cookie recipe as follows.

• The Flour: This recipe called for bread flour rather than all-purpose flour. Bread flour has a higher protein content than all-purpose flour. This higher protein content leads to more gluten development. More gluten development results in a chewier, more dense cookie.

• The Butter: It's not unusual for chocolate chip cookie recipes to call for unsalted butter. However, generally, the butter is creamed with the sugar or sugars. In this recipe, the butter is melted and browned. As the butter begins to brown, the milk solids toast at the bottom of the pot. This adds a nutty, buttery taste to the cookies.

• Tangzhong Starter: The tangzhong starter is nothing more than a cooked milk and flour paste. Up until now, I thought tangzhong starter was only used in bread recipes. When used in this recipe, the tangzhong starter makes the cookies super soft and provides a unique texture.

• The Sugar: Chocolate chip cookie recipes generally call for a combination of granulated sugar and brown sugar. This recipe only uses light brown sugar which results in a chewier cookie. The cookie has a richer, deeper flavor with notes of caramel and toffee due to the molasses in the brown sugar.

• The Chocolate: You can't have a chocolate chip cookie without chocolate chips, right? Well, this recipe suggests using chopped chocolate wafers or chopped chocolate bars instead of chocolate chips. The chopping produces irregular shapes of chocolate and chocolate shards, contributing to the chocolate texture and the overall chocolate experience. The chocolate wafers are not the same, however, as melting wafers.

• The Refrigeration: It is not unusual for recipes to call for refrigerating cookie dough before baking the cookies. This recipe is no exception. In fact, it calls for a minimum of 24 hours of refrigeration before baking the cookies. During this time, the sugar melts, the flavors intensify, and the resulting cookie develops crispy edges and super soft interiors.

• The Size: The King Arthur recipe refers to these cookies as Supersized! As I'll explain below, I made some of the cookies supersized and some smaller-sized.

Now it's time to make the cookies!

The Ingredients - Here's What You'll Need

I've already mentioned a lot of the ingredients, but here they are in one place.

• The Dry Ingredients: The dry ingredients include bread flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Baking powder is a leavening agent. Baking soda is also a leavening agent. However, it results in a softer, chewier cookie.

• The Tangzhong Starter: The tangzhong starter combines milk and bread flour cooked into a paste.

• The Sugar: The only sugar in this recipe is light brown sugar. Light brown sugar is better in this recipe than dark brown sugar. Dark brown sugar can introduce a strong molasses taste.

• The Eggs and Vanilla Extract: Nothing special here - just two large eggs and some vanilla extract.

• The Butter: Unsalted butter is used in this recipe. However, it is melted and browned before adding the other ingredients.

• The Chocolates: For the chocolate, I used what I had on hand. Specifically, I used two 4-ounce bars of Ghiradelli bittersweet chocolate and one 4-ounce bar of Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate. You could use only semi-sweet chocolate, bittersweet chocolate, or a mixture of the two like I did.

• The Toasted Pecans: The King Arthur recipe does not call for nuts. However, I just couldn't bring myself to make chocolate chip cookies without toasted pecans. In retrospect, I'm not sure that the pecans really added to the overall cookie taste.

Steps - Making the Cookie Dough

1. I started by whisking together the light brown sugar and the salt. It seemed an odd time to introduce salt, but it worked. Anyway, once the sugar and salt were combined, I set the bowl aside.

2. Next, I added butter that I had cut into small pieces to a saucepan set over medium-high heat. I melted the butter and continued cooking until it became dark golden, and browned bits developed at the bottom of the pan. This took about 6 minutes.

3. I added the browned butter to the brown sugar and salt and tried to scrape out as many of the browned bits as I could. Then, I whisked the mixture until everything was nicely combined.

4. After adding the browned butter to the brown sugar, I noticed that a lot of browned bits remained in the saucepan. Not a problem because I used the same pan to make the tangzhong starter. Among other things, the browned bits were incorporated into the tangzhong starter.

For the tangzhong starter, I whisked together a half a cup of milk and three tablespoons of bread flour in the saucepan over low heat. During this time, the browned butter bits were incorported into the mixture.

After several minutes, the milk/flour mixture started to thicken. I switched to a silicone spatula and continued cooking the tangzhong until it was thick and left a trail in the bottom of the pan when the spatula was drawn through it.

5. I transferred the tangzhong starter to the brown sugar mixture and whisked to combine the ingredients.

6. Next, I added the eggs and vanilla extract and whisked the mixture until it was smooth.

7. After that, I whisked the flour, baking powder, and baking soda together. Then, I added it to the sugar/butter mixture and whisked until the flour was well incorporated and the dough was smooth.

I placed the bowl with the dough uncovered in the refrigerator for 15 minutes to allow it to cool somewhat.

8. After 15 minutes, I removed the dough from the refrigerator and stirred in the chopped chocolate and toasted pecans.

I covered the cookie dough with plastic wrap and placed it in the refrigerator for the long, 24-hour wait!

Baking the Cookies

After the 24-hour wait, I removed the cookie dough from the refrigerator. It was rock solid. Therefore, I let it sit out for about an hour before forming the cookies.

The King Arthur cookies are described as supersized, but the recipe gives two options for forming the cookies. The supersize option uses a scone and muffin scoop to form an 80-gram portion of the dough. The other option uses a jumbo cookie scoop to form a 40-gram portion of the dough.

Since this was my first try at making this recipe, I decided to make both sizes, starting with the supersize option.

I placed five dough balls made with the scone and muffin scoop on a silicone-lined baking sheet. Then, I rolled each ball between the palms of my hands to make the balls as round as possible.

I baked the cookies in a preheated 350°F oven for 18 minutes. After 18 minutes, I removed the cookies from the oven.

The cookies were about 4 inches in diameter but were not as round as I would have liked. Therefore, I decided to use a technique that Susan told me about.

You take a round cookie cutter a little bit larger than the cookie. While the cookie is still hot, you place the cutter around the cookie and use circular motions to round out the cookie.

Here's a 3-second video illustrating this technique.

I let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for 15 minutes before removing them to a wire rack to cool completely.

I repeated the above process using the jumbo cookie scoop for the smaller size (40-gram) option. I placed eight balls of cookie dough on a silicone-lined baking sheet and baked the cookies in a 350°F oven for 15 minutes.

Once the cookies came out of the oven, I used a smaller cookie cutter to round out the 2 ½-inch cookies. I let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 15 minutes before removing them to a wire rack to cool completely.

My Conclusion

The cookies were excellent! Just as described by the King Arthur site, the cookies were super-soft in the center and crispy around the edges.

There were subtle caramel overtones in the cookies, and the chocolate chunks provided a yummy richness to the cookies.

I don't think that it was worth adding the pecans to the cookies, though. Because of the dominance of the chocolate, the pecan flavor and crunch seemed to get lost.

The supersized cookies were absolutely beautiful. In fact, I remarked to the Master Taste Tester that they looked like they came from a high-end bakery.

In terms of eating the cookies, however, the smaller cookies were preferable, at least for me. The reason was that one of the supersized cookies was just too much because of its richness.

Here's a comparison of the two sizes of the cookies. You be the judge!

This cookie deserves the honor of King Arthur Baking's 2024 Recipe of the Year. It was a bit more complicated to make than a traditional chocolate chip cookie but was totally worth the effort. Yum!

Recipe