In honor of my quarter-life crisis

I've been having a lot of hang-ups about my cooking, lately. For a 21-year-old, I have a lot of, as a friend put it, "middle-aged habits". Well, yes. I garden. I read fiction before I go to bed (sometimes I even fall asleep reading on the couch. Although, on second thought, my grandfather used to do that too, so perhaps that's more retirement-aged than middle-aged). I get into habits and, damn it, I like to stick to them. Occasionally, I will tell people that I can't go places because I have to cook something.

(Yes, I like to can my own jam and dehydrate food. Yes, I also call it "putting up food for the winter").

I also live with, and am friends with, many people who take their 20-something statuses very seriously. Which makes my sometimes-creaky hobbies stick out more than a bit.

And so, in an effort to deal with the issue without actually dealing with the issue, I made cookies. Chocolate chip cookies.

Biting into a warm cookie and following it with a swig of milk transported me back to what felt like every chocolate chip cookies I'd eaten as a child; or better yet, every one I'd wanted to eat, and wasn't allowed to (and I wanted to eat just about every cookie I saw when I was young). These cookies were pegged by the New York Times as being a sort of grown-up dessert, or at the very least, one for all ages, but I didn't notice that so much. I was too busy rolling the chocolate and salt around on my tongue, uniting my present wine-drinking self with that inner five-year-old me.

New York Times Chocolate Chip Cookies
I'm a johnny-come-lately as far as these cookies. The rest of the blogging and online culinary world was exploding with descriptions of their flavor and texture and crispy brown edges weeks ago, and I'm only just getting around to them. I was also a bit of a skeptic as far as the "secret" of letting them sit for 24 hours. After testing the dough on my own, though, I stand corrected. I made the first batch immediately, the second batch a few hours over 12, and the third after around 30 hours. The last batch was obviously the best, and yes, their edges are both crispy and delicious. They kind of make the first batch look anemic. So, let the dough sit. It's worth it.

(Top to bottom, 30 hours, 15 hours, immediately after making dough. Please compare).

They do seem kind of fussy to me still, though. I think it's the two kinds of flours. If anyone makes them without this detail, report back. The recipe lists chocolate discs or fèves as ideal, instead of chips, which I did, but I wasn't completely blown away by it. What I found more important was using a nice dark chocolate, with a high cocoa content. This combines with the salt to make a much more complex cookie than the normal super-sweet kind.

2 cups minus 2 tablespoons cake flour
1 2/3 cups bread flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 1/4 cups light brown sugar
1 cup + 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds good-quality bittersweet/dark chocolate chips (or disks or fèves)
Sea salt for sprinkling

-Combine flours, baking soda, baking powder, and salt in a bowl. Whisk well; then set aside.
-Cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Add dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
- When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.
-Scoop 6 3 1/2-ounce mounds of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet. (Note: The original recipe here continues "...making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie". If you look at the picture above, you can see that I did not make great efforts to follow this suggestion. I'm rarely much of an aesthete, true, but the bulky, horizontal-chocolate cookies tasted twice as good as the others, seasoned with the knowledge that I did not spend excess time readjusting the chocolate logistics).
-Sprinkle lightly with sea salt and bake until golden brown but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes.
-Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more.