My favorite and most reliable chocolate chip cookie recipe is probably the one from The New York Times. I love those cookies, but they are huge (about 3 or 4 oz each), and making them for big events gets expensive. To stay within a reasonable budget and keep people from feeling too full, I went back to some of my recipes for smaller chocolate chip cookies and started playing around with the recipe for chocolate chip pudding mix cookies.
After testing the original version of chocolate chip pudding mix cookie and doing a little experimenting, I came up with this new and improved chocolate chip pudding mix cookie which uses the trick of combining bread flour and cake flour. The flour combo plus the cornstarch from the pudding mix gives the cookies a firm, dense, but not cakey structure. They have an evenly rounded shape and soft centers. As for flavor, you might think the amount of vanilla here would be too much, but it’s really not. Plus I think the extract kind of tones down the artificial flavor of the French Vanilla.
UPDATE: I’ve been making lots of chocolate chip cookies with pudding mix lately and as of now, I think the chocolate chip cookies with pudding and oatmeal (and shortening, unfortunately) recipe is the best. If you want an all-butter recipe, the one below is great. However, if you are willing to use a mix of butter and shortening I recommend the other one in the link.
- 145 grams bread flour (about 1 cup, but please weigh)
- 145 grams cake flour (1 ¼ cup, but please weigh)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon salt plus a pinch
- 8 ounces good quality unsalted butter, room temperature
- 3/4 cup light brown sugar (145 grams)
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar (50 grams)
- 1 box (3.4 oz/96 grams) French vanilla pudding mix
- 2 large cold eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips, Ghirardelli
- Thoroughly mix together both flours, salt and baking soda and set aside.
- In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and both sugars until creamy. Beat in the pudding mix until blended, then add the eggs and beat until light and fluffy, scraping bowl. Beat in vanilla.
- By hand or using lowest speed of stand mixer, stir in the flour until blended. Stir in the chocolate chips.
- Spoon heaping tablespoons of dough (they should weigh 1 1/2 oz each) onto a foil lined baking sheet and put the whole sheet in the refrigerator for several hours.
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 and bake the cookies on parchment lined baking sheets for 12 to 15 minutes or until edges just start to brown.
- Let cool for about 5 minutes on cookie trays, then transfer to wire racks and let cool.
- I like to let mine cool for about 5 extra minutes, then put them in the freezer. I store these tightly wrapped in the freezer.
I just made these today. They look great! I might even make them again (making goodies for a neighborhood activity on Saturday.) The only thing I didn’t have was Plugra butter, but I used a good brand.
I’m so going to try these!!! Thank you!
Yummy. And so smart to try the two flours. Those NYT cookies are my go-to. People think I should have a bakery because of them. But you are so right, there are times when a different recipe is needed. I recently decided that and made the Nestle Tollhouse cookies and have never been really happy with those. Darn it. 😉 I will have to try these next time I need a bunch of ccc’s. Glad I just stopped by. Sure miss you and your blog daily (it’s me, not you.) sigh