An Tran's chocolate chip cookies, at Ba Noi, his bakery in Toronto’s west-end Bloorcourt neighbourhood.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
The arrogant thought came to An Tran in his 20s, when he was high on marijuana and eating a chocolate chip cookie baked by his chef friend: “I can make better junk food than him.”
The cookie of both his stoned and sober dreams had more butter, huge chunks and tiny flakes of dark chocolate distributed throughout the dough and a face-puckering amount of salt sprinkled on top.
It turned out his version is many Torontonians’ ideal chocolate chip cookie, too – Tran, now 41, sells about 1,000 of them each week at Ba Noi, his bakery in the city’s west-end Bloorcourt neighbourhood.
Sometimes you’ll get a huge hit of salt in one bite. The next might contain a puddle of dark chocolate that coats the inside of your mouth. In the one after, you’re overwhelmed by the butterscotch notes from the browned butter. And that’s the joy of eating his cookies – they are decadent and complex while nostalgic and simple.
Tran sells about 1,000 cookies each week.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Chocolate chip cookies are often the first thing kids learn how to bake. By the time I was 12, I’d made the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag so many times I had it memorized. Since then I’ve eaten countless others from bakeries, cafés and my own kitchen, where I’m always chasing a version better than whatever I currently deem the best.
And it’s a quest that will never end because there always seems to be room for improvement in the basic formula of butter, sugar, eggs, flour and chocolate – with bakers filling shops, cookbooks and the internet with their interpretation of the ideal chocolate chip cookie.
The chocolate chip cookie may be universal, but it’s never boring.
Sarah Fennel's chocolate chip cookies.Supplied
The most popular origin story of the chocolate chip cookie comes from Nestlé: In 1939, the operator of the Toll House restaurant, a Massachusetts eatery, added bits of semi-sweet chocolate to her drop cookies expecting them to melt and make the dough chocolate-flavoured, but, in a happy accident, they held their shape.
Historians have found earlier recipes featuring chopped chocolate in a drop cookie, but Nestlé’s recipe – which came to be known as the Toll House chocolate chip cookie – has to be the world’s most famous. You have probably eaten this cookie at a family potluck, a school bake sale or Sarah Fennel’s mom’s house.
Fennel, who runs the uber-popular blog Broma Bakery and recently published the cookbook Sweet Tooth, grew up in a home always stocked with freshly baked cookies. Her mother’s chocolate chip cookies, in particular, were famous in the neighbourhood and nicknamed “Katherine Canfield Cookies,” even though she not-so-secretly used the Toll House recipe.
“I very viscerally think of a cold metal spoon and licking the batter off the spoon while the rest of the cookies bake,” says Fennel, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. “They are my ultimate comfort food.”
In 2020, she published a recipe developed by her business partner Sofi LLansó on her baking blog, which calls for browned butter, an extra egg yolk and a 1 to 4 ratio of white sugar to brown sugar, compared to the 1 to 1 ratio in the original Toll House recipe. The recipe has netted more than four million page views and become far and away Broma’s most popular.
When you make chocolate chip cookies, Fennel says, “It is not only enjoyment of the thing that you’re about to eat, but it’s also this kind of celebration of the memories that you have around that thing.”
Nostalgia was the driving force behind Adam Loo’s decision to sell chocolate chip cookies at Ada Culinary Studio, his restaurant in Charlottetown.
Growing up on a farm, Loo would visit his grandmother and always looked forward to seeing what freshly baked cookies she had in the tins in her kitchen – his favourite, like Fennel’s, was chocolate chip.
“It’s almost like pancakes on a Sunday,” he said.
Adam Loo's very popular cookie.Adam Loo/Supplied
For some, the smell of the cookies is just as evocative as the taste, and during daytime hours when Ada runs its Grab & Go counter, the restaurant is perfumed with eau de chocolate chip cookie, thanks to the countertop cookie warmer Loo shipped in from the U.S.
Loo’s cookie, which has a devoted following in Charlottetown, was inspired by the supremely popular chocolate chip walnut cookies sold by New York’s Levain Bakery, recognized as the most TikToked bakery in America in 2023.
His is smaller and flatter than the hockey-puck-sized, US$5.25 cookie at Levain and made with local butter, jam-packed with dark chocolate chips and chopped walnuts.
The chocolate chip cookie’s enduring appeal may come down to how it’s a reliable and convenient crowd-pleaser.
“You might be too full after a meal for a slice of cake, but you can probably make room for a chocolate chip cookie,” says Loo.
Toronto private chef Maddy Goldberg agrees.
“It might not be the first choice for every single person, but everyone would eat it. Nobody would be mad about it.”
Like Fennel, Goldberg struck metrics gold in December when she published an Instagram reel showcasing her take: a “milk and cookies pie.” The video racked up more than 7.5 million views and was flooded with comments requesting the recipe.
It begins with a giant skillet chocolate chip cookie that you cool slightly and indent with a zig-zag, then fill with a river of sweet vanilla cream and gelatin. The whole thing goes into the fridge and the cream sets like panna cotta.
She says she loves a technical take on simple, approachable, even childlike food. It’s the same combo that comforted her when she was a kid, but – in pie form – was sophisticated enough to put on a Valentine’s Day menu she developed.
Minneapolis-based pastry chef Zoë François's iteration.Supplied
“The flavour profile sort of mimics dipping a cookie. The milky flavour comes through really nicely,” she said. “It’s not something I’ve seen anyone do before.”
By the time the Minneapolis-based pastry chef Zoë François was brainstorming for her book Zoë Bakes Cookies, the discussion among recipe developers of how to make a better chocolate chip cookie seemed pretty saturated.
Don’t cream the butter; brown it. Use salted butter. Sprinkle flaky salt on top of each cookie. Replace the chocolate chips with chopped chocolate. Rest the dough in the fridge for at least an hour. Overnight, if you have the self-control. Bang the pan on the counter when you take them out of the oven. Even – gasp! – skip the chocolate chips altogether.
Was there anything new to add to the discussion, she wondered. The answer was yes. The book includes six recipes for chocolate chip cookies. The cover of the book, published last fall, features a photo of her “smash cookie”: another Levain-inspired chocolate chip cookie that’s been gently pulled apart, its craggy browned surface dotted with glossy pools of melted chocolate and flecked with salt.
In one section of her book, François teaches readers how tweaking ingredients can completely change the look, flavour and texture of a cookie to guide them toward their own ideal version. With an illustrated chart, she explains how granulated sugar produces crispy cookies, and brown sugar gives you softer cookies with deeper flavour; egg yolk-only cookies are cakier, and egg white-only cookies spread a lot.
But the preferred ratio differs from person to person. Her husband likes less chocolate in his chocolate chip cookies. Her mother wants them superthin and crispy.
“Nobody has the same exact palate so why would we all want the exact same cookie?” she says.
Milk and Cookies Pie
Maddy Goldberg's Milk and Cookies Pie.Maddy Goldberg/Supplied
By Maddy Goldberg (@maddygoldberg)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 30-35 min (3 hours cooling)
Serving size: One 10-inch pie
Ingredients
Cookie base:
- 1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1½ cup brown sugar
- 3 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 tbsp maple syrup
- 2 eggs
- 3 cups flour
- 1½ tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
Milk filling:
- 1½ cups heavy cream (35 per cent)
- 1 pack (2 tsp) powdered gelatin
- ¼ cup sugar
- 1½ tsp vanilla
Method
Bake cookie skillet: Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a 10-inch skillet or two five-inch skillets with parchment. In a large bowl, beat sugar and butter until smooth. In a small bowl, mix vanilla, maple syrup and eggs. In a separate bowl mix flour, baking soda and salt. Add the bowl with eggs to the sugar and butter, stir until combined. Add dry mixture to batter and stir until incorporated. Mix in chocolate chips. Transfer batter into parchment-lined skillet and flatten, wet your hand to prevent sticking. Dough should be flat and near the edges of the skillet. Bake in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, or until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool in the skillet for 15 minutes at room temperature.
Prepare milk filling: While the cookie cools, prepare the milk filling. Do not do this ahead of time. As the topping sits, it will harden so it should be done last minute. In a saucepan, combine all milk filling ingredients. Using a spatula, stir over medium-low heat until sugar and gelatin have dissolved, and the mixture is hot and near boiling. Turn off from heat if it begins to boil! If filling is not smooth, use a whisk to mix until smooth. Transfer to a glass measuring cup, or another glass dish that pours easily.
Form and cool pie: Once the milk topping is prepared, use the back of a spoon to make deep indents into the cookie (I do a zig-zag shape but you can do any shape!). This is where the milk topping will be poured into. Optional: Do not make any indents if you want the milk to form a full layer overtop – it will taste the same but will not look marbled. Pour the milk topping into the indents and around the centre of the cookie. The cookie should still be in the skillet so that it does not leak. Carefully transfer the cookie skillet into the fridge for at least three hours to allow milk topping to harden. After cooling, remove from pan and slice like a pie. For best results, keep in fridge until ready to eat.