Holiday cookie of the week: Chewy-gooey chocolate chunk cookies | Canada Voices

Texture has so much to do with the appeal of a cookie – whether you’re going for crispy, chewy or melt-in-your-mouth, The Globe’s food columnist Julie Van Rosendaal will guide you to that perfect texture with a Cookie of the Week recipe throughout December. Next up: How to make rugelach, the soft and tender Jewish treat.

Drop cookies are the most congenial of cookies, perhaps due to ease of preparation – there’s no rolling or shaping, you simply drop dough by the spoonful onto a sheet to bake – or perhaps because the much-loved chocolate chip is the quintessential drop cookie.

There are many, many chocolate chip cookie recipes out there – a google search just now produced 2,690,000 results – and “the best” is entirely subjective. Most of us adore cookies with a chewy, gooey texture, and understanding how the ratios of the ingredients affect texture can help you achieve your own cookie perfection.

Generally speaking, cookies with a higher ratio of butter and sugar (particularly granulated white sugar) to flour will spread more and be thinner and chewier; those with more egg and flour will be thicker and cakier. Brown sugar also makes a difference – it adds a caramelly flavour due to the molasses it contains, and is also acidic, so it reacts with the baking soda, generating more lift. White sugar has a neutral pH, so a higher quantity of white to brown will produce a thinner, denser, flatter cookie.

When the goal is a soft, chewy, even gooey cookie, it’s important to not overbake them. Baking time will depend on the size of your spoonfuls of dough, the heat of your oven, and even the sheet you bake them on (darker sheets tend to conduct heat more effectively). Pay attention to what recipe writers call ‘indicators of doneness’: chewy cookies should be golden but not too dark, set around the edges but still slightly soft in the middle. If they’re too soft to move off the sheet they may need more time, but keep in mind they will firm up as they cool. And if your dough has been sitting for some time, or refrigerated or frozen, your cookies will brown more quickly.

This is my go-to chocolate chunk cookie formula, texturally a midpoint between thin and chewy and thick and cakey – chewy-gooey with a crisp edge. I like to chop dark chocolate – I default to 70 per cent – which naturally produces a range of sizes, and I reserve some the larger chunks to be pressed into the top of each cookie before they go into the oven.

Chocolate Chunk Cookies, Lots of Ways

These are wonderful as-is, but there are plenty of ways to dress them up for the holidays.

Variations

• For chocolate-orange cookies: beat the finely grated zest of an orange along with the butter and sugar. And to go a step further, add a handful of roughly chopped fresh or frozen cranberries, and swap the dark chocolate with white chocolate.
• For double chocolate mint cookies: use peppermint extract in place of the vanilla and if you like, stir in chopped peppermint patties or thin chocolate mints in place of some or all of the dark chocolate. And to make the dough itself chocolate, swap 1/2 cup cocoa for 1/2 cup of the flour.
• For sesame chocolate chunk cookies: beat 1/4 cup stirred tahini along with the butter and sugars, and stir in 2-4 tablespoons of sesame seeds you’ve toasted until golden and fragrant, then crushed with a mortar and pestle, along with the chocolate.

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup butter (or brick-style plant butter), at room temperature
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 1 large egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• 1-2 cups (about 250g) dark or semi-sweet chocolate, chopped into chunks

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F.

In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugars and vanilla until pale and almost fluffy. Beat in the egg. Add the flour, baking soda and salt and stir or beat on low speed (a paddle is the best attachment) until almost combined; add the chocolate chunks (if you like, hold some big ones back to press into the top of each cookie) and stir just until blended.

Drop dough by the spoonful onto a parchment-lined (or buttered) sheet and if you like, press a larger chunk of chocolate into the top of each cookie. Bake for 12-14 minutes (depending on their size) until golden around the edges but still soft in the middle. Transfer to a wire rack to cool. Makes about 1 1/2 dozen cookies.