For Valentine’s Day, I wanted to give some friends chocolate chip cookies. My plan was to make the classic Toll House cookie using the recipe that’s been on the back of the Nestle chocolate chip bag for decades. Then it occurred to me: why not ask the AI for the perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe? After all, I’ve used the AI before and been quite awe struck about the great recipes it spits out. Once, after giving me a recipe for black bean soup, it said it liked black beans. You do?
I typed in my question and was informed it had a recipe for a chocolate chip cookie that would have crisp edges, a chewy center, pools of molten chocolate, and a complex caramel flavor with a butterscotch undertone ‒ “guaranteed to make people go quiet when they take their first bite”. Wow, count me in! It also claimed there was a secret to achieving this perfection.
The secret? Brown the butter! Someone had told me this before – maybe it was Jennifer Mortimore ‒ but I had proceeded to forget about it, until now when the AI jogged my memory. Instead of creaming softened butter with the sugar, you melt the butter, let it brown, cool it slightly then whisk in the sugars. After another cool down, you add the eggs and vanilla then fold that into the flour mixture. Once the dough is made, it rests in the fridge for 24 hours. Sometimes the smallest, simplest tweak can change everything.
I hovered over the pan because butter can so easily burn. While it browned, it made a lot of crackling noises as the moisture evaporated. The moment the noise stopped, the butter turned a lovely deep amber color and released a lovely nutty aroma. I love how cooking engages all the senses, even hearing. Melting butter and stirring in sugar was much easier than blending sugar into butter. I imagine this little browned butter secret would probably improve almost any cookie.
The AI offered other secrets: chop up chocolate bars into big chunks instead of using chips, use dark brown sugar and sprinkle a pinch of coarse sea salt on the tops just as they come out of the oven.
The batch I whipped up was indeed delicious. But they didn’t quite match the AI’s promised texture with crisp edges, a chewy center and no hush fell over the room as people took their first bite. So I will soon have a talk with the AI to figure out where I went wrong. I’ll let you know what it says. If the AI likes black beans, maybe it will like these chocolate chip cookies too!