Crisp but Not Crunchy: Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies

While I love a chewy chocolate chip cookie, I also love a crispy one. As I have mentioned before, I'm a huge fan of Tate's cookies, which have an irresistible crisp, crunchy texture, and an addictive warm caramel-y flavor. I have been having a lot of fun baking my way through Sarah Kieffer's 100 Cookies, and while I'm not particularly enthusiastic about trying out her "Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies" (soft and cakey are my least favorite cookie textures), her "Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies" were calling out my name.
 
To make the dough, you beat softened butter with granulated sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy; add eggs, water, and vanilla; incorporate flour, salt, and baking soda; and add chocolate. The recipe calls for either very finely chopped bittersweet chocolate or miniature chocolate chips. I took some Cacao Barry Guayaquil pistoles and ran them through the food processor. 
 
You can bake the cookies immediately. I used a #30 scoop and got 33 cookies that I baked on foil-lined sheets. They spread a lot in the oven and definitely ended up quite thin. Because the chocolate was in such small pieces, they didn't look like chocolate chip cookies with distinct chips. Instead, the chocolate bits underneath the surface gave the cookies a mottled appearance. 
These cookies were crisp, in the sense that they were light and had an airy interior. But they were not crunchy -- there was no audible snap or bite when consuming one. Also, the flavor of the cookie was average and not very well developed. I think that using larger pieces of chocolate would have been better, as the chocolate flavor was diffuse. Overall, I didn't find these very satisfying. I think that Joanne Chang's recipe for Thin, Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies -- while still not yielding cookies as crispy as a Tate's -- is superior.

Trying this recipe reminded me that I want to revisit Alice Medrich's recipe for Ultrathin Chocolate Chip Cookies. I have only tried the recipe once, and I stupidly ignored the instruction to bake the cookies on foil and ended up with thin but chewy cookies. But I still think that recipe looks promising as I continue my search for the supercrunchy chocolate chip cookie!
 
Recipe: "Thin and Crispy Chocolate Chip Cookies" from 100 Cookies by Sarah Kieffer. 

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Comments

Thanks for a good review.

I admit I am not a fan of recipes from “100 Cookies” yet. The ones I have tried produced cookies too sweet for my taste, sizes too large (although that is easily remedied), and results never made it to my “best ever” list. I appreciate your suggestions of Chang’s and Medrich’s recipes as possible alternatives. I too like those crispy Tate’s!

Look forward to following your scoop to the ultimate Tate knockoff!

Cheers,
Anne
I've lost track of how many recipes I've made from 100 Cookies, but I'm pretty sure it's more than three dozen at this point. Not every one has been a winner, but there have definitely been some standouts. Among my favorites so far (in no particular order) are: the oatmeal-raisin cookies; scotcharoos; rocky road brownies; pan-banging peanut butter cookies (with chocolate added); grapefruit cake bars; pan-banging snickerdoodles; white chocolate, rosemary, and apricot cookies; pan-banging banana-espresso-cacao nib cookies; strawberry creme fraiche bars; neapolitan cookies; banana cream pie bars; and pan-banging toasted sesame cookies.
Thanks for the list of your favorites!

I have only made the white chocolate, rosemary and apricot and the Neapolitan cookies from your list. One cookie that called for fresh strawberries turned moldy in a day. You were to insert a fresh strawberry in the dough but the technique did not work for my bake.

I liked the concept of the white chocolate rosemary apricot cookie. I would make them again and double the rosemary and reduce the sugar. I made the neapolitans but followed others on Food52’s baking group who doubled the freeze dried strawberry amount.

I suppose if I had to choose I prefer Dorie Greenspan recipes where I do not have to make adjustments and there are directions for storing cookies. But luckily we don’t have to choose! Another book I like is Baked To Order by Ruth Mar Tan.

Baking is personal thankfully and we each can tweak to suit our tastes. Any cookbook that inspires me to find my own flavor story is a worthy one. And certainly 100 Cookies did give me a path to do that. And the graphic design set the bar high which can hopefully lead to more cookbooks of visual beauty.

I look forward to trying your favorites here with my own customizing. Thanks again so much for sharing.