Cookie Results

I gathered a few intrepid cookie engineers/tasters and baked up my doughs. On the whole, the melted butter doughs turned out sort of blah and flat. The creamed butter and sugar doughs were the most flavorful and had the most "lift". We liked the recipes that had about 4 oz butter to 1.25-1.5 c flour (150-180g) to 1-1.25 sugar (220-270g) (top 3 recipes). Too much flour was bland, and a higher butter to flour wth lower sugar ration (as in the Alton Brown) lost structural integrity when cookies (molten dough with chocolate ship islands, instead of a melty marriage of the two).

In reverse order of goodness:

5. Alton Brown's "The Chewy" - this cookie has a weird flat spongy texture and almost no flavor that was particularly tasty. The milk thinned these out a bit and added a funny, muffiny taste. The reminded me of muffin tops tops. No one finished even 1/2 of one of these cookies, which one taster described as prison food before expunging them from the competition. Would not even consider making these again.

4. Giant Chocolate Chip Heath Bar Cookies - This dough was designed to hold in broken up pieces of Halloween candy and they would be perfect for that. They are a very dense, sturdy cookie that isn't particularly sweet - perfect for holding in chocolate peanut butter cups, butterfingers, snickers, you name it. They were ok, but not worth making again except for the aforementioned condition.

3. Carla Robbins Chocolate Chip Cookie - This was the second melted butter cookie and much better than Alton Brown's. This was one of the first attempts to "build a better Toll House" cookie, and was very popular (this cookie and the UNIX cookie were a very close 2nd and 3rd). I liked the flavor of the melted butter (carmely), but I think when compared to my current standard cookie recipe (Citizen Cake crossed with techniques from Cook's Illustrated), t is not as easy or flavorful.

2. UNIX Engineer Stand Mixer Cookie - This is a fabulous cookie - cripy edges with melty pools of soft dough and melted chocolate in the middle. This is a fussy cookie - specific times are given for beating the butter (4 min), adding the sugar and beating (another 5 min, but only scrape down twice), and they cooked at a high temp for a short period of time (400 for 6-8 min). They were very tasty melty, chewy, and had enough structure that they didn't collapse when you bit into them. I would definitely make these again and recommend them for anyone who has ever wondered "does all the beating and creaming make a difference?". Yes, it does.

1. NY Times Cookie - the hands down winner. This is a very flavorful cookie with a wonderfully dense structure. This is another fussy recipe and I think the increased amounts of white sugar, the cake flour, and baking powder gave it the texture that I adore. I, and I'm picky, have one "complaint" with this cookie and it has to do with the white sugar- it gives great texture but makes it taste a little like a white sugar/butter cookie with chocolate chips. While I really go for the richer brown sugar taste over the sweeter and crispier white sugar taste. I think in the future I wouldn't so much reduce the sugar, as increase the brown at the expense of the white, although keeping enough white sugar in it to maintain the texture through baking.

I will definitely make the NY Times and the UNIX cookies again. I may even add baking powder to the UNIX cookies to see if I can get a cross between the two. I liked the Giant Heath Bar cookies as cookies to pack a lot of stuff into, even if they were a bit bland on their own. However, both the NYT and UNIX cookies are pretty labour intensive, need to chill at least over night, and require a heavy duty stand mixer. If I have the forethought to plan ahead, I'll make one of those doughs. But on the whole, I'm not sure that they replace the tastiness of the Citizen Cake Cookie Dough a good friend passed along to me, made with some of the beating techniques of the CI cookie. I think the NYT was so good b/c it reminded all of us of a slightly denser version of the Citizen Cake Cookie.

This was a lot of fun, I may do it again with oatmeal cookies....