Michael Mina's Chocolate Chip Cookies

***WARNING***HIGHLY ADDICTIVE***WARNING***

After last week's treat at Michael Mina, I needed to find a recipe for myself. The original recipe is below, but I'm so afraid of losing it that I'm copying the ingredients here:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature and cut into chunks
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup dark brown sugar, lightly packed
• 2 large eggs
• 1-1/2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 pound bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
• 1/2 pound toasted pecans or walnuts, finely chopped

Makes about 40 cookies, if you're careful not to roll any cookies bigger than a golf ball. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees before you begin.

Yes, I took the time to gather all my ingredients on my counter before beginning today. Usually, I just run around the kitchen getting whatever I need when it comes time for it in a recipe. I did this for the photo opt, but ended up really liking it. Everything was within easy reach, and as soon as I was done with it I put it away. It really sped things along and was sanity preserving. And please, don't judge me for using Hershey's. People give me free things and I'm not about to waste them. Maybe if I ever go back to Mina's I'll sweet talk the staff into telling me what kind of chocolate they use.

The batter starts off pretty dark after the first five minutes of hard beating of the butter with two types of sugar. It lightens up as after each egg is added. When ready, it's very soft and the dry ingredients are just barely incorporated. It looks a big sandy and rough rather than perfectly smooth. That's okay; you don't want to overmix and make tough cookies.

After the chopped nuts and chocolate are stirred in the batter looks unreasonably thick. I had to switch from a silicon spatula to chopsticks--you need a stiff wooden spoon You don't need to mix too much, but you want to make sure that there aren't pockets of white dough in the mix.

Roll the dough into golf ball-sized balls and place them at least two inches apart on a baking sheet. I always rinse my hands in icy cold water and dry them before rolling dough balls because it prevents the dough from melting sticking too badly. Also, you want to gently roll them into a ball without actually pressing the dough into itself. Again, you're not baking hockey pucks. The dough should come together without hard squeezing.

Bake for fifteen minutes in a 350 degree oven, until the edges are crisp but the middle is still soft.
Fresh from the oven, the cookies look crackly on top and dry around the edges, but very raw and soft in the middle. They'll harden as they cool, but if you bake them until they're solid they'll cool into a hocky puck. For most cookies but these cookies especially, it's best to underbake. These cookies are mostly nuts and chocolate anyway, so even if you underbake the chocolate will solidify at room temperature and hold the cookie together.

Here's one that was overbaked, mostly because it was smaller than the other ones on the sheet with it. See how the edges have melted and spread out in a thin crackly layer beyond the edge of the cookie? Contrast that with the cookie above, which has a rounded edge. This cookie will probably taste fine, but a crispy cookie really isn't what this recipe is all about. This cookie, aside from being overbaked, also suffered from having one lump of dough in it that didn't have chocolate and nuts mixed into it. Let this be a lesson to incorporate well! Luckily, it was just the one that was subpar.

Don't:

• Chop the nuts too finely. I don't know about you, but I like crispy walnut chunks in my cookies.
• Chop the chocolate too coarsely. I had my chocolate almost in shreds, and I didn't have any chunks that were even half as big as a chocolate chip. It really helps give this cookie a cohesive chocolate flavor and soft chocolate-ness instead of big pockets of hard chocolate here and there.
• Put the dough in the fridge. I did this for my last batch because I was worried that the dough might have started to melt sitting in a hot kitchen. The last batch looked more like the bad cookie above than any of the other batches. I don't think the cold dough could spread properly, and the edges just melted out into ugly flatness.
• Let these cookies sit out too long. Put them in a tupperware container and freeze them until you want to eat them. A cookie this thin and so chock full of nuts and chocolate won't take long to come back up to room temperature, but if you just keep them in a container at room temperature or in the fridge the nuts might go stale.
• Be afraid to experiment with cookie size. Some of my cookies were smaller, and I thought they were actually cuter and a more manageable size. I just enough dough to roll a ball about two-thirds the size of a golf ball.

Consensus: great! I would put in even more nuts next time, perhaps substituting out a half cup of chocolate. But it's Michael Mina's recipe (which he says his young son knows how to make), and the cookies definitely turned out like the ones I had at the restaurant. Crisp around the edges, crackly on top, and very soft and chewy in the center. I love cookies that have this texture, so I think this recipe's a keeper. It's going to be fun trying variaions on this theme: whole wheat pastry flour instead of white, adding raisins and/or oatmeal, using peppermint oil or almond extract, and of course experimenting with pecans and almonds. Happiness may come in a cookie after all; I think I've broken my cookie curse!

If only I had the time and energy to make root beer sherbet and sassafras ice cream as well. One day I will, if only to prove that I have as much culinary talent as Michael Mina's seven year old son.

Link to recipe