Aaannnnd... We Have a Winner!

Remember when I thought that I had come up with the best chocolate chip cookie recipe? Well, in that post I mentioned that I wanted to try one more recipe before making the final decision that my cookie recipe was my favorite, and I made them last night. And guess what? My cookies are crap compared to them. I saw this recipe from America's Test Kitchens on a friends blog and they looked so good. Go there and read the recipe now. I'll wait... (insert elevator music here)... Back? Ok. Let's discuss. I was very intrigued by the method. It seemed so bizarre, but I know that they tested the recipe a billion times a billion different ways, and this one must have worked best because they published it. Because of this, I had faith and went with it. I was also a little skeptical of the measurements. It used only a little less butter than I normally use and a lot less of the other key ingredients (flour and brown sugar) but the same amount of eggs and vanilla. Weird, right? Then the mixing and waiting and mixing and waiting and mixing a waiting. I don't know what the point is in it, but I was scared not to do it, and rightfully so. Those test kitchen people know what they're doing.

The browned butter and the brown sugar made the batter have a caramel-ish taste and really made a flavor difference in the final product. So good. I wanted to get the full 16 cookies out of the batch, so I didn't try the dough until I was done scooping and you know what? It really did make 16 perfectly even cookies. There was only a little bit of dough stuck to the sides of the bowl that I got to taste (it also helped that I didn't tell anyone I was making cookies so they weren't hovering over me eating the dough). So very precise. Gotta love that.

One more thing... I didn't have dark brown sugar so I just used light brown sugar and they still turned out awesome. Oh, and I put some sea salt on them before I baked them too. Totally optional though. Go and make them. Now! The. Best. Chocolate Chip Cookies. Ever.

One more thing for real. They passed the morning after test. Yup... still good. I even had one 2 days after and it was still good.

They are so pretty. All shiny and chewy.

This is a portion size in our house. I ate them like a stack of pancakes. In my dreams.

I couldn't stop taking pictures of them.