Learning This Changed My Chocolate Chip Cookies Forever

I want you to think about the flavor you enjoy in chocolate chip cookies. Now those flavors and aromas are products of what's called non-enzymatic browning reactions. And I realize that that doesn't sound like a very interesting term, but it is absolutely transformative in how we flavor food. And we're going to take a peek under the hood of these reactions as I move through three levels of flavor modifications through chocolate chip cookies. So by the end of this video, you'll be able to consciously tailor amazing flavors, not only in your cookies, but probably most of your cooking. Okay, let's back up for a quick second. So there are two categories of browning reactions. There's enzymatic, and that's when fruits and vegetables are cut or bruised. And today we're going to cover non-enzymatic reaction, specifically the Maillard reaction and a little bit of caramelization. So starting with level one, and these are things that you're probably already doing, but let's get a deeper understanding of what's going on with my classic chewy chocolate chip cookies. And like most great chocolate chip cookie recipes, this one starts with browning butter, which creates those beautiful toasted flavors via the Maillard reaction. Now sometimes the terms caramelization and the Maillard reaction are confused with one another, and it makes sense because both use heat. But the difference is that the Maillard reaction's ideal temperature is lower than caramelization. Also, caramelization only requires sugar, whereas the Maillard reaction needs sugar and proteins. And they both create all these wonderful flavor compounds, but I will be discussing the Maillard reaction more in this video because it has to do more with chocolate chip cookies. That's okay because as you can see, we're going to get some caramel-like flavors from that reaction alone. All right, browning butter entails melting butter in a light colored pan and continuing to heat until a foam forms on top. These are milk proteins that are slowly unraveling and trapping air. And at this point, I take a spatula and stir until those proteins become little specks floating in the butterfat. Milk inherently contains the sugar lactose. And this is very cool because not all types of sugar can work in the Maillard reaction. Only sugars called reducing sugars work. And that is almost all sugars we use in baking except for white sugar. This reaction creates all types of aromatic compounds, and the fat-soluble ones hang out in the butterfat and will get mixed into every crumb of our baked cookie. And to that brown butter, I'm going to add my sugars, water, vanilla, salt, and baking soda. Baking soda is typically categorized as a leavening ingredient where it leavens or lifts baked goods by reacting with an acidic ingredient to create carbon dioxide gas. In chocolate chip cookies, however, it's primarily used to speed up the Maillard reaction. So if you look here, you can check out the difference in leavening agents on cookies. This is my classic chocolate chip cookie. Here it is with double the amount. You can see that it's darker and has spread slightly more. And you look at this guy here. This one's made with baking powder, so he's a kind of chubby lump of a cookie. And this one here has no leavener at all. It's interesting that this one is also kind of chubby with no spread. There is a reason for this. My recipe also contains eggs, which contain protein and these proteins coagulate, or they unwind and stick together when exposed to heat. And that provides structure in so many baked goods. Now when you add baking soda to chocolate chip cookie dough, you have changed the pH. You've increased it a little bit. And so those egg proteins are going to act differently. It changes the charges on them so that they can't stick together as easily. So the cookie is able to spread much more before the proteins get their act together and finally stick. Remove the baking soda and the proteins stick together much more quickly and the cookie can't spread as much. Now sometimes leaveners are used if you prefer a cakier type cookie. And generally you can identify those types of cookies that have a softer crumb interior and lots of air pockets by scanning the ingredient list of your recipe and usually you'll see baking powder. A popular recipe that really uses this technique would be a Levain style cookie. Next is to mix the flour and chocolate pieces to make the final dough. And this brings me to my third point of maximizing flavors, which is to rest the dough. Some recipes state that this helps the flavors mature, but what does this really mean and does it work? So this is thought to do a couple things. First, this can allow the liquids in the dough to hydrate the flour a little more, which can create a softer final texture. And the second thing that it's potentially allowing enzymes present in the dough's ingredients to break things down. One such enzyme is called alpha amylase and this one chops up large starch molecules in the flour into smaller pieces. And if amylase sounds familiar to you from bioglass, that's because it's used in human digestion. It's in our saliva. That's the one that disintegrates crackers as we chew them in our mouth. The amylase is chopping up the starches into their smaller pieces, which are sugar molecules. That's also why these crackers and things taste a little bit sweet as you continue to chew on them. And even though my cookie dough is so good that drooling over your mixing bowl is a common side effect of making it, the primary source of amylase in the dough is coming from chicken eggs. And so the idea is that this amylase is producing all of these smaller sugar molecules that are the fundamental molecules required for the Maillard reaction, those reducing sugars. So I tested this by resting my dough overnight and I even took a hint from our bread baking fanatics and added some diastatic malt powder that has even more amylase in it. And what I found that in both batches, it didn't really make a difference in both flavor and color. So there's really no enhancement in the Maillard reaction with this step and that could be because of a couple things. First, enzymes are temperature sensitive and were likely not working when I stored the dough in the fridge. Or maybe the contribution is small compared to the larger flavor impacts of browning the butter. But one thing it did change was the texture. It was noticeably more soft and tender on the interior rather than chewy. So flour also contains proteases and those are enzymes that chop up proteins. And these proteases could be potentially chopping up gluten that was worked into the dough. Maybe it's just the hydration that I was talking about earlier. That clearly had an effect because these cookies aren't spreading as much. But if you prefer a soft and more tender center for your cookie with a crisp, almost shortbread-like crust on the exterior, resting your dough may be the answer. I ended up not resting my dough for my vinyl cookie which I added half chocolate chips and chopped chocolate and it gave it that perfect sweetness to contrast with a chewy sweet interior and crispy crust. Okay, now that we've established a basic flavor profile for chocolate chip cookies, we're going to build on all of that and boost flavors by adding some simple ingredients. Again, I'm going to start with brown butter, but this time right when the color of the milk solids start to turn a little tan, I'm going to lower the heat. Then I'm going to pour in dried milk powder and stir the entire time. This is going to turn the foam into a beautiful amber color. We'll start to see so many of those toasted milk proteins that are going straight into our dough. In my classic recipe, there is approximately 1.5 grams of toasted milk proteins that are coming from the butter. With this recipe, I've added enough milk powder to increase the amount to about 7 grams. Triple the amount in the classic recipe and more than triple the amount of flavor. If you want to do this to your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, a good rule of thumb is that for every tablespoon of milk powder you add, you'll want to remove a tablespoon of flour. Proteins provide bulk in the cookie and if you don't do this, you'll probably get a fatter cookie that won't spread as easily. And the second idea is a super easy way to add flavor complexity, which is through add-ins. But not just any add-ins, you're going to be looking for ingredients that have undergone the Maillard reaction or caramelization already. And here are my suggestions. Number one is caramelized white chocolate, which is actually not caramelized. It's white chocolate that has milk powder in it and that's undergone the Maillard reaction, but it tastes caramelly so I get the name. Chopped toffee. Again, this is the Maillard reaction and not caramelization. Roasted nuts. Also pretzels. That dark characteristic color on the outside of pretzels is the Maillard reaction, which is induced usually by baking soda or a lye bath. And number five are caramel chips. And these are hard to find, but it's worth it if you can find them. I get mine at Trader Joe's. It's a seasonal product sadly, but I always buy enough to last me the whole next year. For my final cookie, I ended up using nonfat milk powder, which gave me a gloriously buttery, savory cookie studded with caramelized white chocolate. So if you notice, you only need a couple simple ingredients to transform a regular chocolate chip cookie. But if you're intentional about choosing ones that have undergone these reactions, it's the ultimate flavor boost. And this last one is where I got to have a little more fun and be more innovative. Typically with these reactions, their high temperature requirements limits how much we can use them in the cookie baking process. If we attempted to bake the cookie until the internal temperatures were ideal for either the Maillard or caramelization reactions, the cookie would be completely dried out. So that's why we do these reactions separately. We prioritize the Maillard reaction and brown butter, then add that to the cookie dough or maybe add pre-made toffee or caramel chips. And during baking, we're really limited to the surfaces of the cookie for these flavors to develop, right? That's where the conductive heat from the pan and the radiative heat from the oven actually hit the cookie so that the temperature is high enough. So I challenged myself to create a cookie that had an intense flavor from browning reactions throughout the entire cookie. My dulce delicious chocolate chip cookie recipe is the most intensely flavored cookie of this kind that I've ever made and tasted. And the strange thing is, it doesn't taste like straight-up dulce de leche, but the best way to explain it is if you take the very essence of a chocolate chip cookie dough flavor and just turn up the intensity, that's what it does to this cookie dough. And so far, I've tested four types that I could get here in the U.S. that work with my recipe. A homemade version made from condensed milk, La Serra Nesima, Nestle from a squeeze bottle, and Nestle from a can. And these all vary in color and texture from each other, but all yielded excellent cookies. Now this cookie also really benefits from brown butter. As I said earlier, it's really half the equation in adding fat-soluble flavors and I mix in a good portion of that dulce de leche along with a bit of brown sugar, water, vanilla, salt, and baking soda. So dulce de leche is the Maillard reaction paragon. If you've ever tasted it, you'll know that it's clearly a gift from the Latin American kitchen gods. It's a dairy-based product from Latin America with main production coming out of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. As for what's in it and how it's made, it follows the same trajectory as condensed milk. So it starts with milk and sugar, and if you cook that for a long time over low heat to evaporate some water, that's when you have condensed milk. If you add some baking soda, which helps prevent clumpy dulce de leche, but of course also helps start the Maillard reaction, and sometimes a bit of vanilla, and you cook it even longer, that's when you get dulce de leche. And there could be some caramelization in there, but since that really starts in earnest around 330 Fahrenheit, and dulce de leche is usually cooked at temperatures right around boiling, the majority of the flavor and color are most likely predominantly from the Maillard reaction. And this is a pretty intense modification, which is why I left it for last. It's most likely not going to be applicable to other recipes. Usually when I come up with something as custom like this, I have to break down every ingredient down to its macromolecules, then build the recipe from the ground up. And it is a really interesting recipe. There's so much milk protein coming from the dulce de leche that I don't even need eggs. It's adding about 26 grams of protein, where a standard large egg only contains around 6 grams. As for these cookies you see here, I used one of my level 2 add-ins, which is my favorite salted caramel chips from Trader Joe's. Final cookie is very chewy with a super intense nutty and toasted flavor. So go forth and brown your cookies, and of course if you want to replicate any of the cookie recipes that I've covered in this video, you can head over to my website. I have step-by-step instructions. I'm probably overly detailed over there, but they are all yours. Otherwise, happy baking!