By Claire Burnett, The Current Co-Editor-in-Chief
Everyone has their own take on the perfect chocolate chip cookie. While I usually use my grandma’s recipe for my ideal chocolate chip cookie, I stumbled upon Alvin Zhou’s recipe for 48-hour chocolate chip cookies.
Previously, I baked Alvin’s 100-hour fudgy brownies, and even though they took a lot of patience, they certainly did not disappoint. After the 100-hour brownie success, I knew that although 48-hour cookies would test my patience, I just need to trust the process.
Similar to the 100-hour brownies, this recipe used many of the same baking techniques such as browning butter and using espresso powder for a richer flavor. These techniques do not require an extensive amount of experience, but they do require some practice. Although the 100-hour brownies and 48-hour cookies seem tasking based on their names, most of the time is spent waiting for the dough or batter to cool.
My first step was to make the toffee that would later be incorporated into the cookie dough. I had never made toffee before, or even boiled sugar, so making the toffee was challenging at first as I attempted to keep track of the temperature while stirring the sugar. After burning a few of my fingers, the toffee finally reached 300 degrees, so I poured it onto a pan and let it freeze for 30 minutes.
I then broke the toffee into small pieces, chopped up a few chocolate bars, and mixed the ingredients together. After this, I rolled the dough into balls using two tablespoons of dough and I let them cool in the fridge for 36 hours.
When I put the cookies in the oven, everything seemed to be going fine until the cookies spread out so much that they became one huge cookie (pictured below). Because of the amount of butter used in the recipe, these cookies are very prone to spreading. If I made this recipe again, I would either use less butter or put less cookies on each tray.
Despite the square shape of the cookies, their taste was not affected at all. Between the toffee and brown sugar, the cookies were a little bit sweet for my liking, but the dark chocolate added some bitterness. Other than that, the cookies were delicious and had a different flavor than any cookie I have had before. The browned butter gives the cookies a nutty flavor and the espresso powder adds a depth of flavor.
Overall, these cookies were delicious and I would recommend them to anyone who plans to bake things well in advance. For my final recommendation: they are definitely worth the wait.