The Great Choc-Chip Cookie Comp: BA's Best

It’s getting down to the wire, and while I’m by no means sick of chocolate chip cookies, I will say I was ready for a slightly different take on them.

Leave it to Bon Appetit to make the “best ever chocolate chip cookies” to fulfill my wants and desires.

Over the past few years I have become OBSESSED with Bon Appetit. They’ve obviously been around for quite some time, but their YouTube channel has recently gained extreme popularity. The Test Kitchen has been changing the food game, and I’ve grown to love all of the chef’s and what they bring to the table. 

BA’s best chocolate chip cookie recipe is oddly similar to Tasty’s recipe; it uses brown butter, a good amount of DARK brown sugar, extra egg yolks for richness, and slightly more salt than what most people are used to. 

DISCLAIMER: Because I messed up the brown butter recipe last time, I was nervous about this recipe doing the same thing. The cookies are supposed to look like normal ones but just be richer in flavor; when I made the Tasty recipe, they flattened to a cookie chip. To prevent this and try to give the fairest review, I decided to freeze the dough for a few hours before baking.

When it came to MAKING the dough, it was fun in a different way than most. I melted ½ cup of butter until it turned into that brown, nutty goodness, then added another ¼ cup of butter and let that melt slowly. That gives a blend of that intense, nutty flavor, as well as that usual creamy, fluffy structure a cookie possesses. 

Once the butter has cooled slightly (but is still very much melted), some granulated sugar and a hefty load of dark brown sugar get whisked by hand, followed by the egg, egg yolk, and vanilla. Dry ingredients get folded in, followed by 6oz of bittersweet chocolate. Because this is quarantine and chocolate was scarce, I subbed semisweet chocolate chips instead. I scooped the dough into balls and left it to freeze.

These cookies get baked for a relatively short amount of time at 375 degrees F; just slightly hotter than normal.

They’re ready. Let’s review!

The Look: While these looked MUCH better than the Tasty cookies, they still weren’t QUITE as fluffy as they looked in BA’s recipe. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong here or why it’s so different when I use brown butter. However, they’re still…really pretty! The brown butter truly gives them beautiful color. 8.5/10

Crunchy Chew: They were definitely chewy, and definitely had the crispy bits on the outside! However, they weren’t extraordinary. After having cookies that completely nailed my ideal texture, these just didn’t quite live up to the expectation. Probably due to my brown butter errors…so not personal to the recipe! 7.5/10

Chip to Dough Ratio: This dough is PACKED with flavor, but doesn’t have QUITE as much chocolate as I’d prefer. I would love just a bit more chocolate; however, because the dough is so tasty, I give this recipe a pass on my typical standards. 9/10

Overall Taste: The dough is rich, dark, and delicious. However, I will say I almost preferred the taste of the cookie dough, rather than the baked cookies. When I baked them, some of that strong flavor got…duller. It was still DELICIOUS, but could have been even better if the flavor was a bit stronger…and if there was more chocolate. 8.5/10

Wow Factor: The brown butter and slightly excess salt really made these special. It gave the dough such a unique and tasty flavor that made it stand out from the other chocolate chip cookies. 9/10

FINAL SCORE: 8.5/10

I understand the appeal to these. They’re a more sophisticated chocolate chip cookie. However, I just can’t quite get them to bake right. And when it comes to my ideal chocolate chip cookie, I think I like a less sophisticated flavor, and place a greater emphasis on the texture.

We’re getting down to the end of this quest! Stay tuned to see which comes out on top : ).