Good things happen when I finish all of my grading and lesson planning before 2 on a Sunday.  Good things in the form of baking adventures that I can pursue leisurely for hours on end.  Good things in the form of FINALLY breaking in my yellow stand mixer.  Isn’t it beautiful?

Anyways, this weekend’s adventure was Chocolate Chip Potato Chip Cookies.  For a couple of weeks now, I’ve been dying to try my hand at Kenji’s perfect chocolate chip cookie on Serious Eats.  However, that project actually is a little too long for a casual Sunday afternoon.  And it requires baking by weight, which I’m yet to try.  But with Super Bowl being today, I still felt the need to make a form of chocolate chip cookies (They seem like an American dessert to me).  So I went the salty-and-sweet route of last week and added potato chips, as per this other Serious Eats recipe. The result? Amazing.  Look for them in the staff room tomorrow if it doesn’t snow too much.

First up, whisk together the flour and baking soda in a medium bowl and set it aside.  Serious Eats calls for salt as well, but I never bake with salt.

Now comes the tricky part.  I’ll admit, when I saw that I was going to brown butter, I got really nervous.  It is a skill I have never really tried before.  I knew that if you wait even a second too long, the butter burns and is ruined.  And I also knew that I did not have enough butter to make that mistake.  So I put it in a pan over medium heat and swirled it every so often by the handle.

Then I got scared.  I turned the oven off and pulled the pot to the side.  Melted butter is almost brown butter, right?  I tried to justify not continuing. But in the interest of learning, I decided to continue.  I put it back over slightly lower heat (I have a gas stovetop that tends to run a little hot) and switched to the stir-with-a-spoon method.

I alternated this with the hold-the-pan-a-little-above-the-flame-like-a-marshmallow method.  At the slightest hint of brown in my butter, I took it off the heat and put it into the bowl of my mixer.  In the end, I decided better slightly brown than fully black, and went from there.

Once you’re past that hurdle, the rest is smooth sailing.  Add the brown sugar and regular sugar to the bowl and mix at low speed until smooth.  Sorry I’m not sorry for the gratuitous action shots of my mixer.  I love it.

With the mixer still going, add the egg and yolk, vanilla, and whole milk.  Continue mixing on low speed until well combined.

Side note: I now have a full bottle of whole milk minus two tablespoons and nothing to do with it.  I think the only solution to this problem is making ice cream.  Are there any others I’m overlooking?

Regardless, your next step is to add the flour mixture from the beginning.  Mix this on low speed until just combined.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and add the chocolate chips.  I just used a full 12oz bag.  I also know what you’re thinking: Wait! Meg! What about the chocolate chunks?  My answer: 2/$5 on chips at A&P.  Also with the sheer volume of chocolate going into this, I think the smaller chips actually are the way to go.

Now, here I ran into another unexpected hurdle.  The dough was not a texture of cookie dough I was at all used to for a drop cookie.  I’m assuming that’s because I don’t usually melt butter before I use it in drop cookies, but it was strange.  The chocolate chips would not mix into the dough.  I had all of these spare chips in the bottom that didn’t want to combine.

So rather than dropping the dough by the spoonful onto the baking sheet, I used my hands to form flattened disks that mildly resembled the break and bake cookies you can buy pre made at the store.  I took about a spoonful, rolled it together, and flattened it on top on the sheet.

I also decided to make the cookies bigger than usual for no other reason than all of my small spoons were in the dishwasher.  You should be able to fit about a dozen on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Put a handful of kettle-cooked chips in a bag and crush them up.  If you have the option to use Cape Cod chips, I’m about 100% sure that those would be ideal.  They apparently don’t sell them this far south of Massachusetts, though, so I was stuck with Lay’s version.

Add a pinch of the crushed chips to the top of each cookie and push them into the dough to make them stick.

Bake at 325°F for 15 minutes or until the edges are golden brown.  Allow to cool about 10 minutes on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cookies should be eaten within 3 days so that the chips on top don’t get stale.  If they’re eaten sooner I don’t think that would be a problem either.  Time for some football!

Enjoy!

Chocolate Chip Potato Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 2 1/3 cups flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 10 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons whole milk
• 2 cups chocolate chips
• 1 cup crushed kettle-cooked potato chips

Directions:

1. Whisk together flour and baking soda in a medium bowl and set aside.
2. Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat, swirling or stirring occasionally until butter begins to brown.  Make sure to monitor closely – butter burns before you know it.
3. Add browned butter, brown sugar, and sugar to bowl of stand mixer and mix on low speed using the paddle attachment until smooth.
4. Add egg and egg yolk, vanilla, and milk, continuing to mix until combined.
5. Add flour mixture and mix on low speed until just combined, being careful not to over mix.
6. Remove bowl from mixer and stir in chocolate chips.
7. Scoop dough by the rounded spoonful onto an ungreased baking sheet.  Form the dough into flattened disks and press crushed chips onto the top of each cookie.
8. Bake at 325°F for 15 minutes or until golden brown around edges.  Allow to cool 10 minutes on sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.