How to Make Patent-Violating* Chocolate Chip Cookies
*Patent #4,455,333, which is thankfully now expired
The trick to making a shelf-stable cookie that seems fresh-baked—crispy on the outside, chewy in the middle—is to make two different doughs! Use a chewy dough for the center of the cookie and a crispy dough for the edge. Rolling these two doughs together and slicing them is a technique used in “refrigerator cookies,” where dough is rolled into a log, chilled, and then sliced. Normally this is done with multiple doughs to create cookies with visual differences—for example, those with a red colored center and a white edge. In this case, we’re using two doughs to change the texture in different regions, which in hindsight is obvious, but it’s not at all obvious at the outset.
A normal chewy dough recipe would call for more brown sugar and shorter baking times, but neither of those will work—we don’t want the center to be a darker color, and we can’t bake the crispy part longer, because, well, physics. I’m using corn syrup in this version to increase the simple sugar ratio in the chewy dough, but given the framework above, feel free to experiment!
1. “Crispy dough”: Make a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough, starting with a standard recipe, such as the Toll House® Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe. Instead of 3/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar, use 1 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar. This batch will be our “crispy” dough.
2. “Chewy dough”: Make a second batch of chocolate chip cookie dough using the same recipe. Instead of 3/4 cup white sugar and 3/4 cup brown sugar, use 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/2 cup brown sugar, and add 1/2 cup corn syrup. This dough will be the “chewy” dough. (You’ll notice that it’s also stickier and wetter. Normally this would be a problem, as a wet dough would spread out, but in this case, it’ll be surrounded by the other dough).
3. Transfer the chewy dough from the bowl onto a large sheet of parchment or wax paper, form it into a log shape about one inch in diameter, and then fold the paper over to surround the log. Roll it a few times to ensure it is round. Place in freezer and allow to chill, around 30 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, spread the crispy dough out onto another sheet of parchment or wax paper and form a large rectangle that’s the length of the chewy dough log and wide enough to wrap around the log. (You can place a second sheet of paper on top of the dough and then roll it out, if necessary.)
5. After 30 minutes—that is, once the chewy dough log has stiffened enough to be workable—place that log on top of the rectangle of crispy dough. Wrap the log with the crispy dough, joining the ends together.
6. If the conjoined doughs feel too soft to slice, place the whole log in the freezer again to chill, or let it rest overnight in the fridge. (Some people swear that resting the dough overnight matures the dough and improves the flavor—but I’ll save that for another time.)
7. When ready to bake, preheat your oven, slice the dough into cookie-sized discs, and bake per direction. I recommend using parchment paper
Note: If you don’t have corn syrup and you’re itching to try this right now, honey is a potential substitute as well: At 38 percent fructose, 31 percent glucose, it’s remarkably similar to high-fructose corn syrup in sugar composition (approximately 17 percent water and approximately seven percent maltose are the other major substances). Of course, honey will bring its own flavor and color to a cookie, but that might be interesting, depending upon the type of cookie you make. Crispy-chewy oatmeal cookies, anyone?
