Cookies!
I have been doing some experimental baking, and am fond of the following cookie recipe. It's somewhere in the space of linear combinations of the Good Eats / Alton Brown "chewy cookies" and "brownies" recipes.
You will notice that it contains as much brown sugar as it does flour; the resulting cookies are quite sweet, but they don't taste like candy or anything. They are definitely much closer to good bakery cookies than the ones I started with (the Good Eats cookie recipe, which makes cookies that are much too cakey for my tastes.)
Makes about 36 cookies (I have only made half-batches thus far):
[all ounces are volume, not weight]
8 oz butter
4 eggs
16 oz flour (I use all-purpose)
4 oz granulated sugar
16 oz brown sugar (I use dark brown)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 tsp vanilla (This is pushing it; 1.5 tsp is plenty if you don't love vanilla)
12 oz semisweet chocolate chips
Melt butter; beat in both sugars (Good Eats version uses a food processor on medium for two minutes; I use a spatula); whisk eggs with vanilla, and beat into mixture; add salt and baking soda, and add flour gradually while mixing, until thoroughly combined. Mix in chocolate chips; chill for 1 hour. Bake at 375 for about ten minutes. As they bake, the surface will gradually change from smooth to crinkly; when that change in texture reaches the center of the cookies, they're done (by my standards). If you want them crispy, try giving them another 30 seconds or a minute? I didn't.
The result is much less cakey than the Good Eats version. (The fact that I substituted AP for bread flour when making their version may make my evaluation unfair.) It's pretty chewy (in the gooey sense, like brownies, rather than the cakey sense), but still kind of weirdly fluffy. I haven't decided whether I like this better than the denser, brownie-like texture of what I think of as "commercial cookies", which is what I was aiming for.
You will notice that it contains as much brown sugar as it does flour; the resulting cookies are quite sweet, but they don't taste like candy or anything. They are definitely much closer to good bakery cookies than the ones I started with (the Good Eats cookie recipe, which makes cookies that are much too cakey for my tastes.)
Makes about 36 cookies (I have only made half-batches thus far):
[all ounces are volume, not weight]
8 oz butter
4 eggs
16 oz flour (I use all-purpose)
4 oz granulated sugar
16 oz brown sugar (I use dark brown)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 tsp vanilla (This is pushing it; 1.5 tsp is plenty if you don't love vanilla)
12 oz semisweet chocolate chips
Melt butter; beat in both sugars (Good Eats version uses a food processor on medium for two minutes; I use a spatula); whisk eggs with vanilla, and beat into mixture; add salt and baking soda, and add flour gradually while mixing, until thoroughly combined. Mix in chocolate chips; chill for 1 hour. Bake at 375 for about ten minutes. As they bake, the surface will gradually change from smooth to crinkly; when that change in texture reaches the center of the cookies, they're done (by my standards). If you want them crispy, try giving them another 30 seconds or a minute? I didn't.
The result is much less cakey than the Good Eats version. (The fact that I substituted AP for bread flour when making their version may make my evaluation unfair.) It's pretty chewy (in the gooey sense, like brownies, rather than the cakey sense), but still kind of weirdly fluffy. I haven't decided whether I like this better than the denser, brownie-like texture of what I think of as "commercial cookies", which is what I was aiming for.