For the statement "The judge assigned to this CFJ will be kind enough to include eir favorite cookie recipe in eir judgment," we do require some judge's arguments:
This is my favorite cookie recipe. It's from Alton Brown and produces medium-large, soft chocolate chip cookies he calls "The Chewy." I'll provide the recipe below, then add some commentary after it's through to explain some of the choices and make sure you don't make the same mistakes I did the first time I made them. This recipe SHOULD fit in an eighty-character fixed-width line, for all our terminal-based or fixed-width font mail client users. Ingredients 8 ounces unsalted butter 12 ounces bread flour 1 teaspoon kosher salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 2 ounces granulated sugar 8 ounces light brown sugar 1 large egg 1 large egg yolk 2 tablespoons whole milk 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips Instructions 1. Melt the butter in a 2-quart saucepan over low heat, then set aside to cool slightly. 2. Sift together the flour, salt and baking soda onto a paper plate. 3. Pour the butter into your stand mixer's work bowl. Add the sugars and beat with the paddle attachment on medium speed for 2 minutes. (If you don't have a stand mixer, a hand mixer set to medium will do just fine. If you don't have either a stand mixer or a hand mixer, work it with a whisk or a silicon spatula until the butter and sugar come together) 4. Meanwhile in a separate bowl, whisk together the whole egg, egg yolk, milk and vanilla extract. 5. Slow the mixer to "stir" and slowly work the egg mixture into the butter and sugar. Mix until thoroughly combined, about 30 seconds 6. Using the paper plate as a slide, gradually integrate the dry ingredients, stopping a couple of times to scrape down the side of the bowl with a rubber spatula. 7. Once the flour is worked in, drop the speed to "stir" and add the chocolate chips. 8. Chill the dough for 1 hour. 9. Heat the oven to 375 degrees F and place the racks in the top third and bottom third of the oven. 10.Scoop the dough into 1 1/2-ounce portions onto parchment paper-lined half sheet pans, 6 cookies per sheet. 11.Bake two sheets at a time for 15 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. 12.Remove from the oven, slide the parchment with the cookies onto a cooling rack, and wait at least 5 minutes before devouring. Ingredient notes: - For best results, WEIGH YOUR FLOUR. Flour is not a fluid, so "one cup" is not always the same amount of flour. Baking is a precise science, not an art. If you measure by weight, you'll have better cookies. If you don't have access to a scale, you may substitute by volume (but you'll have to do the measurements yourself. - Unsalted butter is key. Using unsalted butter allows you to control the amount and quality of salt you use in your cookies. I like kosher salt here--the large crystals are really good at dissolving and absorbing into the batter. - Make sure you use baking SODA, not baking powder. You'll only make that mistake once. - If you don't have bread flour, you can substitute using all-purpose flour. For every 4 ounces of all-purpose flour, add 0.6 ounces of corn starch. Either way, you need a tough-binding flour that still has a little give. Bread flour is great for that purpose. If you are using volumetric measures, first how dare you, and second replace two tablespoons per one cup of flour. - A whole bag of chocolate chips seems like a lot but I can tell you from experience it is not as much as you'd think. - If you like a more intense cookie flavor, you can substitute dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar. It'll provide a more "molassessy," smoky flavor but will also make your cookies a little firmer. Assembly notes: 1. You can melt your butter in the microwave too. Just keep an eye on it so it doesn't burn or boil over. Your butter might also look a little cloudy out of the microwave, but you're putting it into cookies! Nobody will ever notice. 2. If you can sift, I strongly recommend it. Sifting your flour will prevent annoying clumping and help you work the dry ingredients into the wet without problems. If you don't sift, you will also probably wind up with extra dense cookies. Not fun to eat. If you're substituting with AP flour and corn starch, you MUST sift in order to thorougly combine the two ingredients. Also, if you sift onto a paper plate, sift onto a very flexible (read: cheap) plate. That will be important when adding the flour to the wet ingredients. 3-7.N/A 8. Yes, one hour of chill time is necessary. It'll make the dough come together and make it so much easier to work with when putting them on the sheet pan. You also are giving it time for the brown sugar and butter flavors to meld into the flour. If you don't do that, your cookies might just taste like flour. From experience: you don't want baked goods that taste like flour. 9. If you don't have three racks, just use whatever racks you have. If you don't have two racks, just do one batch at a time. Also trim your parchment paper unless you like oven fires. 10.Six cookies per sheet seems like not very much. LISTEN TO THIS ADVICE, unless you want a giant cookie mess that is raw in the middle and burned on the outside. Again, from experience. Six per sheet is plenty. Eight MAYBE, if you have a huge sheet pan. 11.N/A 12.Again, waiting lets all the flavors meld. Your patience will be rewarded. Given that the text above is a cookie recipe, I rule this statement TRUE.
