Baked: New Frontiers in Baking, Chocolate Chip Cookies

Because everything I have made out of the "Baked" series of cookbooks has been amazing, I decided I would make their chocolate chip cookies today.  I was imagining bakery-perfect cookies.....and they tasted good, but were quite flat and the ingredients seemed off.

2 cups flour to 2 1/2 cups chocolate chips and 2 sticks of butter?  Seems like some more flour would be needed.....

This is a close-up of how the best cookies turned out, compared to the picture in the cookbook.  I don't know how theirs turned out so thick and round and nicely shaped.

Aside from being a very flat cookie, I did some experimenting using parchment paper vs a silicone mat on a cookie sheet. In one of the Baked cookbooks, they mention that you can use either, but that they found the cookie was less crisp on the bottom when they used the silpat mat, so they always use parchment paper, and they said that a person could use one piece of parchment paper twice.

So, I cooked multiple batches of cookies comparing the silicone mat, and the parchment paper.  Also, the recipe says to chill the cookie dough for 6 hours.  I have never chilled anything for 6 hours, and had somewhere I wanted to take some cookies in an hour, so I cooked some without chilling and then, six hours later cooked the rest of the dough

What I found:  the cookies on the silicone mat actually seemed to come out better than the parchment paper.  They seemed to keep their shape better and didn't go quite as flat as the parchment paper and I liked the bottom of the cookie slightly better.  So, I think I will use the silicone mat moving forward for cookies, unless I don't want to do more dishes, then I will use the parchment paper of course :)

As for the chilling:  I didn't see a real difference between the chilled and not chilled dough, and I didn't notice a taste difference.  So, I didn't see that as a value-added step.

You can see below the comparison of the silicone mat vs the parchment paper and the chilled dough vs the non-chilled dough.  Overall my main learning was that the silicone mat seemed to help the cookies keep their shape better than parchment paper.

And, unfortunately, I am not going to make this recipe again as is.  I might make it again with some added flour and less chocolate chips, but I don't want any more flat cookies.

The first batch of cookies, dough not chilled, using both silicone mat and parchment paper.  You can see the silicone mat cookies held their shape better.  The parchment paper cookies were more flat and melded together.

 This was the second batch, using the dough that had been chilled for 6 hours, and I spaced the cookies on the parchment paper out a bit more to make sure their "flatness" wasn't due to over crowding.  Even with more room, they were just as flat and the silicone mat cookies again retained some of their round and less flat shape.

This is a summary of the two different batches, the chilled and non-chilled dough cookies from the silicone mat on the top row, and the chilled and non-chilled dough cookies from the parchment paper.  I don't see any difference for chilled vs non-chilled and the silicone mat cookies definitely came out better.  The verdict is:  use the silicone mat!  And, need to figure out what went wrong, or what needs to change to get a thicker, fluffier cookie.