Cookies

On my quest to bake perfect home cookies I tested probably a dozen online recipes. All of them claimed to be 'the best cookies you ever tried' but none of them were actually good. Finally I found something that worked and this is the recipe you will see below.

They are gooey on the inside, slightly crunchy on the outside. Perfect size.

Preparations

Step 1

Put sugars into mixer bowl.

Step 2

Add cold butter in cubes, mix until combined – visible chunks are gone – but not aerated.

Step 3

Add eggs and mix until smooth.

Step 4

Combine all dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Whisk together and proceed to slowly add it to the mixer while running on low speed. Continue until flour strips are gone.

Variants

The base dough is ready. Now is the time to decide on your preferred variant(s). All calculations are adjusted for 500g of cookie dough. Tweak if applying to different amount.

Chocolate chip

Depending on preferences, add 100-150g chopped dark chocolate.

Double chocolate (brownie)

Add 15g cocoa powder and 120g dark chocolate.

Incredible how much chocolatey flavor gets packed with so little cocoa. With the gooeyness of the inside, they resemble brownies.

Matcha

Add 10g culinary grade matcha powder and 100g white chocolate chopped.

Similarly here, adding 2% of the dough in matcha powder is enough to bring deep matcha flavor to the final product.

Lemon

Add zest of 2 lemons, 1 tsp of lemon juice and 100g of chopped white chocolate.

Shaping balls and baking

Step 5

After mixing your variants, divide them into 130-140g balls for cookies that will be 10cm in diameter.

The balls should be flat on the bottom but overall quite round.

Step 6

Put balls to freezer overnight or at least 4 hours. You want them to be completely frozen.

Step 7

When ready to bake (balls can be made days in advance), take balls out of the freezer. Warm up oven to 175°C and bake for 13-15 minutes. The goal is for the ball to melt. It shouldn’t get visibly brown or crispy. It’s normal that cookie needs to set on the tray after removing from the oven.

I use metal 10cm rings to keep shape of the cookies. There are techniques for fixing improving cookie shape after baking before they set but I am lazy and want to achieve it in one go.

Wait for 30 minutes before serving.