A few months ago a friend of ours insisted that I had to try the chocolate chip recipe from Gramercy Tavern (as I recall, this was right after I baked some other type of chocolate chip cookie, so I wasn't sure if it was more a recommendation about the Gramercy Tavern recipe or a subtle complaint about the cookie I had just made). Normally I would be game to try just about any chocolate chip cookie recipe, especially one that Grub Street dubbed "New York's Finest New Chocolate-Chip Cookie" (and while the recipe comes from the Gramercy Tavern pastry chef, I don't believe the cookie is actually served there; instead, the cookie is available at Danny Meyer's restaurant in the Whitney Museum). But when I looked at the recipe from Miro Uskokovic, I realized that the recipe uses gluten-free flour. While I will happily make recipes that happen to be gluten-free, I do not stock gluten-free flour replacements. So I decided to take a pass on the cookies.
But not long after, I tried Miro's wonderful Almond-and-Plum Snack Cake recipe, and I also saw that Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour was on sale, so I thought what the hell -- I might as well give the gluten-free Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookie recipe a try. The recipe indicates that Miro uses Thomas Keller's Cup4Cup gluten-free flour, and that each gluten-free flour mix is different and will produce disparate results. While I can easily purchase Cup4Cup at Whole Foods, it's definitely more expensive than Bob's Red Mill and since I was only making this recipe on a lark, I didn't splurge for the good stuff. But I did make one modification to the recipe. Miro mentions that Cup4Cup contains milk powder, which "boosts the flavor, color and tender texture." I checked the Bob's Red Mill label and it doesn't include milk powder. So I thought I would just add some and see what happened.
Besides the use of gluten-free flour, there are a couple other notable features of this recipe. It uses browned butter, and it also includes a prolonged mixing and aerating step. You combine warm browned butter with vanilla, salt, sugar, and brown sugar; add eggs and egg yolks and whip (with the whisk attachment, not the paddle) until thick and aerated; add the gluten-free flour and baking soda (and in my case, a tablespoon of milk powder); and incorporate three types of chocolate: dark, milk, and white. I actually used four types of chocolate, adding caramel chocolate (Callebaut Gold) into the mix. I used a #30 scoop to portion out the dough and got 40 cookies per batch. The cookies were actually challenging to scoop because it seemed like there wasn't quite enough batter to hold together all of the chocolate. There were a lot of chocolate pistoles that were loose or falling off, but I did the best I could to stick errant pieces of chocolate back where I could. I chilled the cookies overnight before baking.
When I baked the cookies the next day, I wasn't thrilled with how they looked. They spread very little and were shaped like fat little pucks. Despite my addition of a little milk powder (which admittedly was a total stab in the dark), they hardly browned at all. My cookies looked nothing like the once pictured with the recipe, but I can't claim to be surprised since I used a completely different gluten-free flour mix.
While I was afraid that the pale color of the cookies would correspond with bland flavor, the cookies had what I would call a classic chocolate chip cookie flavor, and the generous amount of chocolate was decadent. But the big problem for me was the texture, which was markedly lackluster. They lacked the crisp exterior and chewy interior that I prize in a chocolate chip cookie. Instead, the texture was something closer to cakey. I would give the recipe another try if I had Cup4Cup, but I wouldn't make these again with Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour. I mean, the cookies were totally fine, but if I'm going to make a gluten-free cookie, I still want it to be the best cookie that it can be!
Recipe: "Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookies" from Miro Uskokovic.
Recipe: "Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookies" from Miro Uskokovic.
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