This past week, I decided to make chocolate chip cookies and pit two different recipes against each other, one from Claire Saffitz’s Dessert Person and Stella Parks’ BraveTart recipe books to see which one is “better” (totally subjective). While I’ve made chocolate chip cookies before, I never used either of their recipes before. To be consistent, I made the brown butter variations of both and half the recipe so I didn’t end up drowning in cookies.

BraveTart Cookies

I chose to make these ones first because they were less fussy than the ones from Dessert Person. While browning the butter, I put the rest of the other wet ingredients in the stand mixer bowl. It is very important to note that the directions mention to wait until the browned butter is “semi-solid and opaque.” This, I later realized, was very important because when the browned butter still appeared to be clear and a bit warm, the wet ingredients never reach the light and fluffy state, and stay thick with a greasy film (butter) on top. After noticing after a couple minutes that it never seemed to reach the desired state, I waited another 10 minutes until the butter sort of solidifed and upon mixing it again, it appeared to work like a charm.

I tossed the chopped chocolate (50:50 Hershey’s milk chocolate : Ghiradelli’s 72% dark chocolate) with the flour and then mixed it with the wet ingredients on low speed with the paddle attachment. I got a roommate to help me shape the cookies (1-1.5 oz balls) and also place pieces of chopped chocolate on top of each cookie. I sprinkled a pinch of kosher salt on each. Overall, the process was straightforward and came together and yielded around ~20 cookies.

It took about 11 minutes to cook the first batch where it almost looked underbaked with the tops being paled but the edges were browned. 11 minutes ended up being the perfect time because the next batch, which I baked for 13 minutes, ended up being overbaked and crunchy as a result.

I really like the look of this cookie. I like the pools of melted chocolate, which gives it a distinct look, different from other chocolate chip cookies I’ve seen. As for taste, it was salty. Not unbearingly salty but more like “you need some milk to go with this when you eat it” salty. I think I would use 1/2 the salt next time (probably because I forgot that I was using Morton and not Diamond Crystal) and skip adding the kosher salt on top. For that reason, I changed the title of these cookies from “chocolate chip cookies” to “sea salt chocolate chip cookies.” Though there’s no actual sea salt in these cookies.

Texture was soft, not that chewy, but the edges had a nice crisp-ness. Other than the saltiness I think I would have liked the taste of this cookie a lot.

Dessert Person

This recipe took a little more work. Unusually, this technique called for me to brown half of the butter and combine it with the other half of butter (unmelted) with some heavy cream (I never heard of heavy cream in cookies). After I did that, I let that chill while getting the other ingredients ready. One nice thing about this recipe is that I didn’t have to use a stand mixer, just a flexible spatula and a whisk. I also noticed this recipe didn’t have any baking powder, just baking soda. Putting together this dough was pretty straightforward but it did call for a chill period (12h – 24h minimum). I did notice that this dough was way softer and wetter, compared to the other recipe’s dough. I could see why it needed to be chilled (which I did in 2 oz ball portions, making about 8 cookies)

Why does cookie dough need chilling? What makes it worth to do so, versus not doing so? I heard all sorts of things that it helps with texture or stops spread. I never cared about cookies enough to check or investigate it further.

Either way, upon baking these cookies, my first observation is that these cookies spread a lot and they are very flat, probably because there is no baking powder or other leavening agent to puff the cookie up. This was just a natural characteristic of Claire Saffitz’s cookies.

One other thing I noticed was that these cookies had ruffled edges. According to Claire, that ruffling was the result of chilling time and baking soda. Maybe these were multiple little tiny lifts for the cookie?

This cookie was big. In terms of taste, it first and foremost tasted very butterscotchy with some chocolate. The taste of the brown butter came out very strongly, sometimes stronger than the chocolate inside itself. These cookies were also chewier.

Verdict

In terms of taste, I do like BraveTart‘s flavor profile better; it could become a real threat if I cut down the salt. However, I do think Dessert Person had the better cookie texture of chewiness. I noticed that some of my roommates liked Claire Saffitz’s cookies more, also because of its texture and less general saltiness.

It does make wonder: for a cookie, does the taste or the texture matter more?