Ollie and the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies
illustration by Alfred Cheng
Tomorrow will be the last day of school. To celebrate, the class is going to throw a party and Ollie wants to surprise his friends with home-baked chocolate chip cookies. His chocolate chip cookies will be PERFECT—because he is going to bake them all by himself.
Ollie took the recipe card hidden from its box on the shelf. He dashed about the kitchen to gather ingredients: flour, baking soda, salt, butter, sugar, eggs – and of course – chocolate chips!
He threw the ingredients into a bowl and mixed them with a wooden spoon. Soon the spoon wouldn’t budge. He pushed with all his might.
THWACK! The spoon flew out of his hands. It bounced off the counter and out the window—taking the recipe card with it. “Oh no!” Ollie poked his head out the window. But all he saw were the tops of shop awnings. No spoon. No recipe card.
Ollie paused, then shrugged and kneaded the dough together with his hands instead. He licked a finger. Yum! After scooping dollops onto the cookie tray he slid them into the oven…and waited.
Tick…Tock— the minutes dragged by as slow as in math class. Ollie held his breath as he watched the messy mounds of dough darken to a golden brown.
“They must be ready now.” Using oven mitts, he pulled the pan out and waltzed it to the table. The warm chocolaty aroma drifted up into his nose. “No recipe, no problem!” He beamed.
Ollie gave a cookie to his little sister. She took a nibble. Then she pouted and shook her head, “No, no, no! I like them crispy so I can dip them in milk and they don’t turn to mush.” On her tiptoes, she whispered in his ear. “The secret is to bake them longer.”
Ollie frowned, yet he stuck the cookies back into the oven for a few more minutes. They became as dark as tree bark. “I think I’ll ask someone older. They should know a perfect cookie when they taste one.” So he brought a few cookies to old neighbor Anna who lived across the hall.
Old Anna bit into the cookie, winced, and squawked. “No, no, no… they are much too hard. To make them chewy and soft you must refrigerate the dough before you bake it. The secret”, she whispered, “is to roll the dough into balls before baking.”
Ollie scowled, yet he returned home and made a fresh batch of cookies using Old Anna’s tips. Now it was time to test again. He needed to find someone with more experience. He rushed the cookies to Chef Tony, the restaurant owner.
Chef Tony devoured a cookie in two bites, closed his eyes, and sighed. “No no no. It is a good cookie, but a perfect cookie must have dark chocolate. He knelt beside Ollie and put a hand on his shoulder. “The secret,” he whispered, “is to sprinkle some sea salt on top. It will make the chocolate more delicious.” Chef Tony patted his belly and laughed. He sent Ollie home with a sachet of sea salt.
Ollie slumped into a chair. He yanked a clump of cookie dough out of his hair. The last day of school was tomorrow and he was surrounded by piles of imperfect cookies. He picked up the nearest cookie and flung it across the table. A stack of cookies toppled over like bowling pins.
“Wait!” He hadn’t tried a single cookie himself! Ollie grabbed broken fragments from each batch and tasted each one. They were all delicious. He thought about the many tips people had given him, and then he knew — there was no single cookie that was perfect for everyone. Yet, there were different ways to make a cookie that was perfect for someone.
Ollie baked one last batch with dark chocolate and sprinkled them with sea salt. He packaged some from each batch into bags tied with ribbon.
On the last day of school, Ollie asked his friends to describe their perfect chocolate chip cookie. Then he gave each friend a bag that most closely matched what they described. After school, he delivered cookies sprinkled with salt to Chef Tony. He presented thick and chewy cookies to old neighbor Anna. And he saved a bag of extra crispy cookies for his sister, who grinned and slurped them down with milk.
They all agreed, Ollie made the most perfect chocolate chip cookies!
Dark Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies
makes 2 dozen cookies
prep time: 15 minutes
cook time: 15 minutes
total time: 30 minutes
ingredients
2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup (65% dark) bittersweet chocolate, cut into chip-sized pieces
1/2 cup (85%) dark chocolate, cut into chip-sized pieces
3/4 cup pecan pieces
1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
ingredients
2 1/3 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup (65% dark) bittersweet chocolate, cut into chip-sized pieces
1/2 cup (85%) dark chocolate, cut into chip-sized pieces
3/4 cup pecan pieces
1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
instructions
Preheat the oven to 350°F.
Sift the flour and baking soda into a medium bowl. Stir in the salt. Put the chocolate chips in a fine-mesh basket strainer and shake to remove any small fragments of chocolate.
In a bowl, cream half the butter until fairly smooth. Add both sugars and the remaining butter and beat until well combined. Continue to beat until the mixture is light and creamy. Add the eggs one at a time, and beat until well combined. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and stir to combine. Toss in the pecan pieces and then the chocolate chunks. Fold the dough with a spatula to be sure that the pecans and chocolate are evenly distributed. The dough can be refrigerated, well wrapped, for up to 5 days or frozen for up to 2 weeks.
Using about 2 tablespoons per cookie, shape the dough into balls. Arrange 8 to 12 cookies on each pan, leaving about 2 inches between them, because the dough will spread. Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the tops are no longer shiny.
Let the cookies cool on the pans for about 2 minutes to firm up before transferring to racks to cool completely. Repeat to bake the remaining cookies. (The cookies can be stored in an airtight container for up to 2 days.)
Adapted from Food Gal
Author’s Notes
In the kitchen
Thomas Keller uses 55% chocolate and 70 to 72% chocolate. I used 65% and 85%. As long as you use two different kinds of chocolate, one sweeter and the other more bitter, you’ll get the delicious bittersweet balance of a dark chocolate chip cookie.
In life
Ollie and the Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies is inspired by a lifetime of trying disappointing cookies: packaged cookies in grocery stores, cookies that came with my sandwich order, free cookies in the breakroom at work, frozen tubes of cookie dough to take home and bake, pre-mixed packages of dry ingredients – recipe after recipe all claiming to be the BEST chocolate chip cookie formula. The perfect cookie existed in my imagination and was held to such standards that I could not find it anywhere. I never thought that the perfect chocolate chip cookie was simply just one that I liked, and not anybody else.
