After baking our first round of imitation Levain cookies together, it was time for my husband and I to “face off.” To test our theories and our strategies, to try to make them even better.
For me, the first batch of cookies had been good. They had turned out too flat compared to Levain’s cookies (we were partially to blame since the recipe mentioned adding more flour to avoid that) and the salt ratios seemed too low, but the crisp on the outside of the cookie was great.
They had the soft inside and crisp outside that are quintessential of both the perfect cookie and, interestingly, the perfect french fry.
However, they’d left me unsatisfied for a few reasons. One, they didn’t have the rich distinct flavors that I look for in my cookies. The walnuts were bland and the caramel notes of a good dough were missing.
Overall, the changes I wanted to make all centered around deepening, darkening, and developing the flavors of the cookies. I wanted them to have more rich caramel flavors and wanted to improve the flavors overall.
So the changes I made were:
- Browning the butter and bringing it back to room temperature in order to deepen the overall flavor of the dough
- Toasting the walnuts to bring out their flavor and to add a bit more crunch
- Doubling the salt. Salt can do a lot to open your taste buds as long as it’s done right
- Adding Vanilla. My family are Vanilla devotees and I was annoyed there wasn’t any in the recipe to start with
- Substituting half the light brown sugar for dark brown sugar, which has more molasses so it can make a chewier cookie. It also darkens the flavor and color of a cookie
- Chilling the dough overnight. This was meant to help the flavors develop but also to help with the height/spread of the cookies
I also ended up doing half chocolate chips and half chocolate chunks. If you’ve read my previous cookie blog, this should come as no surprise. In fact you may have expected me to use all chunks per my, “Chocolate chunks from a bar = better than chips any day,” comment.
What you might be surprised by, is that I didn’t want to use any chunks. I only did because we’d run out of chips. Before we made Batch 1, I had planned to sub out all the chips for chunks, no question. BUT, during the taste test, I noticed that the ratio of chocolate to cookie was perfect.
No, there were no molten rivers of chocolate flowing through the center of the cookie to add intrigue to every bite. There was however, a certain clean perfection to finding a chip here and a chip there. All dispersed evenly. A big difference/help, was that we were using chocolate chips that were more wafers then chips. They’re bigger than normal chips and don’t have the waxiness of “chips” to hold them together weirdly perfectly vs. allowing them to melt.
The results of all of my changes? My cookies definitely came out a step above the originals.
The brown butter enhanced the caramel notes in the cookie, plus I learned a cool new trick.
When you cook butter, just like anything else, it loses liquid through evaporation. By the time you’ve browned your butter, there is a good amount of the water the recipe might have been relying on, that has been cooked off. A great way to fix this and to bring your butter back to room temperature at the same time, is to whisk in an ice cube. The process was easy and gave the butter some pre-creaming fluff at the same time.
The toasted walnuts were a game changer. The toasting brought out the delicate nutty flavor in a wonderful way and helped give the nuts even more of a “snap.”
The vanilla, salt, and dark brown sugar all worked together to enhance the caramel notes and general flavor of the cookie. Unfortunately, I did notice that after a couple days those benefits seemed to fade away.
I do think that chilling the dough helped with flavor, but it certainly helped with the height and spread issues of the cookies.
In fact the only things I didn’t like about my cookie in the end, centered around the chunks to chips variation.
The smaller chopped chunks created a marbled look, which would have been okay, but didn’t match up with Levain’s clean golden look. It also meant that the cookies couldn’t hold their own next to my husband’s, which were deemed by our friends to be “visual perfection” (they absolutely were).
The other element the chunks added was inconsistency with the chocolate distribution. Although on a normal day this can be great and is the point of chunks, it wasn’t what I was looking for here. Chocolate inconsistency in a 6oz cookie quickly leads to being overwhelmed by the sheer amount of chocolate. These 6oz monsters are a lot as it is. When you add in bites where all you taste is chocolate, it becomes too much.
Overall, my cookies felt more satisfying than the first batch for sure. I found myself done after half of one vs. still looking for more at the end of a full one.
The “Bake Off” also ended up fitting the original theme of, “an engineer vs. a home baker,” even more than expected. My changes all centered around flavor and ingredient enhancement. While my husband’s changes were based on science and his research into how the ingredients interacted with each other and what that would lead to.
The Bake Off’s not done though.
We’re already on to Round 3. We’ll be working together to combine what we learned and the changes we made into the ultimate Levain imitation cookie. Stay tuned!