Deb Perelman Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of three baking books, including my latest, Snackable Bakes. Each Saturday, I am hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today, I'm talking to Deb Perelman, the beloved blogger behind Smitten Kitchen, which celebrates, as Deb puts it, triumphant but unfussy cooking. I would add baking as well. Deb is the author of three New York Times Bestselling cookbooks, including her latest, Smitten Kitchen Keepers: New Classics For Your Forever Files. The recipes on Smitten Kitchen and in Deb's books are meticulously and exhaustively tested, which means they always work. Like, always. Which is why I am so excited to talk with her today about chocolate chip cookies. It might seem like a simple subject, but folks, it is anything but. Deb and I walk through not one, but all five, chocolate chip cookie recipes on Smitten Kitchen, as well as do a deep dive into her latest chocolate chip cookie recipe in Keepers. So, that's half a dozen, for those of you keeping track. We talk about resting cookie dough, the importance of cookie size, and how to get perfectly round cookies every time. If that's your jam, stay tuned for my chat with Deb.
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Deb, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie, and to talk chocolate chip cookies, and so much more with you. Before we dive into cookies, I just wanted to briefly chat about you. You are the OG food blogger behind Smitten Kitchen, and almost 17-year-old food blog. I think its birthday might be in July?
Deb Perelman:
It might be.
Jessie Sheehan:
It might be in July. The New Yorker has called Smitten Kitchen "The blog." Now, you have said that you were, "Down with being called a blogger," which I think implies that maybe not everyone wants to be referred to that way. Can you unpack why you don't mind the title, and why others might?
Deb Perelman:
First of all, thank you for the introduction. And yes, the site is turning 17, which I've joked it's probably going to get its driver's license before me. There's this idea that you're supposed to change what you're doing, but I really just love the site. I know I do other things besides the website, but I really love the format. I am lucky I kind of stumbled into it, because it perfectly matches what I want to put out there, which is a little bit of talking about the recipe in a place where we can have a conversation and I can share pictures, and tidbits, and links to random things that made me laugh. I love the format, and I still consider it the very center of what I do, even though I'm also doing cookbooks and other things.
Jessie Sheehan:
You've also said that you're a complainer in your head. I think that means you're kind of nit-picky about recipes and making them work. How do you think that contributes to people's enthusiasm for the blog and for your own enthusiasm for the blog?
Deb Perelman:
I got to just sidetrack here for a second. I have a seven-year-old and I talk about her on the site. She's notoriously picky. She kind of hates... People are like, "Oh, your kids must eat so..." I'm like, "Oh, my daughter hates my cooking. She hates everything I make." She's so picky. I really will sit there and say it with a straight face being like, "How did she get so picky?" I am so picky. When you cook for a living, you can be such a good closet nitpicky person. People don't notice that much how much stuff you don't like. They only see what you do put out.
I think that a lot of things that I make, I'm coming at them from a perspective quietly on the inside of thinking... sometimes quietly, sometimes not quietly, of thinking "These are usually so average. Why am I bothering making this? Isn't it usually so bland? It always comes out dry. I never like the flavor here." Those little complaints in my head, it took me a while to realize that's actually the starting point of the recipe that I'd like it to be. It's a little bit whiny on my side of things, but hopefully that comes out a little more helpful on yours.
Jessie Sheehan:
You've said you want your blog to be the place that one goes to find their new favorite things to cook and bake, and I can attest it is. Tell us what people find at Smitten Kitchen, and what they won't find.
Deb Perelman:
What I'm hoping you'll find is something you want to make, explained in a way that makes sense to you. I would like all of the hurdles and fusses to be removed that I can. I can't remove everything. Yeast still has to rise, there's things that I have to proof, there are certain things that have to be chilled or they don't set right. But if there's anything I can remove, I will, and that's because I'm a little bit lazy at home too and I don't really want to go through all those stops, and I don't want to wash a lot of dishes.
So, if I can do it one bowl, I will. I hope you'll find recipes that feel like the most doable version of it, but also a very airtight version, to know that I worried a lot because I was terrified that you would come to the site today and make the very recipe you saw and it would flop on you. I understand how betraying that feels, like the betrayal of a recipe that doesn't work when you took time you didn't have, or money you didn't have for groceries, or energy you didn't have, and you put them into this recipe and then it flopped. You just feel so frustrated. I don't want that to happen to anyone on my site, on my time. Which means that every recipe has always worked for every person since the beginning of time. There have been no negative comments.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ever. Ever. Ever.
Deb Perelman:
Ever. But the goal is for everything to work.
Jessie Sheehan:
There is one item that you are definitely finding when perusing Smitten Kitchen, and that item is chocolate chip cookie recipes. By my count, you have five different ones and you have seven, if you count oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and chocolate chip shortbread cookies. Also, there is a fantastic new and improved chocolate chip cookie recipe in your amazing new book, Smitten Kitchen Keepers, and we are definitely going to do the deepest of dives into that. Before we do, I just wanted to talk about the five recipes on the site briefly and chronologically, because I thought it would be super cool to understand Deb Perelman's evolution of chocolate chip cookie recipe development. I think it's cool. All right, I'm a nerd, but I really think it's cool.
Deb Perelman:
You are a baking nerd. That's okay. That's why we're here.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's why we're here. To begin, I thought it might be helpful if I just remind the listeners what's in a Toll House cookie.
Deb Perelman:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Because the Toll House cookie is the mother. She is the mother recipe. Everything that comes after it is based on that. So, Toll House is all-purpose flour, it's baking soda, it's salt, butter, it's granulated sugar and brown. Just I'll mention this here, but it's in equal amounts in the standard recipe. Vanilla, eggs, semi-sweet chocolate chips. Peeps, it's a winner. If you have never made the one right off the bag, it's a good one.
The first recipe is January 2008, so 15-
Deb Perelman:
Oh my goodness.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know, crazy.
Deb Perelman:
Wild.
Jessie Sheehan:
15 years ago. So, how old was the blog then?
Deb Perelman:
It was a little baby.
Jessie Sheehan:
This recipe compared to Toll House has a little less flour, butter, eggs than Toll House, a little more sugar, chocolate, vanilla, salt. It also has loads of kind of toasted nuts in it. I think they're pecans. You kind of talk about wanting those nuts to become almost dust-like, some of them, so that that's adding, I'm sure, to the texture. It's an interesting recipe. It's a very low temperature. You bake it at 300 for a long time, like 18 minutes. It's a basic chocolate chip cookie recipe-ish. Do you recall what drew you to it?
Deb Perelman:
The funny thing is, January 2008 my son's like 13 months old, 14 months old. I could throw around words like "favorite" without having the gravitas that I require to use the word "favorite" these days. In fact, I'm terrified to use the word "favorite" because it really is that I'm going to evolve. I'm going to have my favorite chewy chocolate chip cookie, my favorite crispy one. I'm going to have my favorite tall one. So, it's so tricky to say that, but at the time it was early and I'm like, "These are my favorite," what you should say is, "Right now." I'm not saying I do not love them still, but at the time I had grown up on Toll House. We wanted to make chocolate chip cookies, we made the recipe off the back of the bag. We used just regular Toll House chocolate chips. Nobody rested the dough. And that was it.
Okay, so this is a very unpopular opinion. I feel like most people don't like nuts in their cookies. I understand why people don't want it in banana bread or zucchini bread sometimes. It's sort of like that interruption of texture. But I feel like in a chocolate chip cookie it can really add texture. You get that extra crumbly crunch that isn't just sugar or chocolate. So, you can get a lot more texture without just sweetening or making it heavier. I really liked it and I really like toasting them well, and then chopping them very small. You don't necessarily recognize it is a chunk of nut. It's just a great extra texture in there.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know, I think you even write in the headnote that the nuts are such that some people will eat them and not realize. I mean obviously, allergens, we want to be careful, but that people will eat that cookie and they may think, "Oh, I'm very anti-nut," and then they eat it and they can't even tell.
Deb Perelman:
And you could tell I was surrounded by sharks who were like, "Ugh, why are you putting nuts in cookies?" I was extremely defensive about my position that it was okay to have nuts sometimes, and you can definitely hear that in the text.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. All right, the next recipe which you describe is the consummate recipe, came in November 2008, so almost a year later. It was written by David Lee for the New York Times, and this is a really... Listeners, I can't stress this enough. This is a really important recipe. I feel like I'm doing a news show, but we're not talking about something serious, we're talking about-
Deb Perelman:
This was a big viral moment before we really had viral recipes.
Jessie Sheehan:
It was.
Deb Perelman:
It was.
Jessie Sheehan:
It was a really important recipe which changed the chocolate chip cookie game for all of us. What David does with this recipe is, there's no more all-purpose flour. Now we have cake and bread flour. We have baking powder as well as baking soda. We have fewer eggs, vanilla, and salt than Toll House. Now we have a little more chocolate. We're moving into this thing which a lot of recipes start to do, which is having more brown sugar than granulated. Toll House, as I said, it's an equal amount. When you wrote about this recipe, which was amazing, you flagged for all of us what made it a game-changer.
First, the dough resting. Tell us why, and that was huge that we were resting dough-
Deb Perelman:
Super interesting... I think we're in a moment where City Bakery and Jacques Torres, and all these places had really popular chocolate chip cookies. Before there were cronut lines, there were chocolate chip cookie lines. They had these chocolate chip cookies, these bakery sell ones, and they were larger, and they were more chocolatey, and they were browner, and they were heavier, and they were a real moment. They often had sprinkles of salt on top. They were not Toll House. They really had nothing to do with... Most of these bakers... I remember he talked to all these bakeries, and he talked to all these bakers. They weren't sharing the recipe, but they all added tips on how to make it more like the ones that everybody was obsessing over in New York.
From that, he learned about dough resting, and so did we. I mean, maybe he already knew about it, but we were talking about dough resting. It's basically this idea that as the flour hydrates, you get a better texture out of the cookies. It's a real commitment. I think it was 24-36, or 48 hours, which means that you have to be a person who wants to make a chocolate chip cookie that you will eat in a couple of days. I don't know what kind of chocolate chip cookie person you are... Are you making it because you think in two days you might crave it? No, I want it now. So, you had to be a real adult about it. You had to get some adult ingredients. So, they want you to get these Valrhona Feves, which I think are an eighth of an ounce each. They're tiny and they're an oval-shaped disc, and they had a very particular quality, and they were expensive, and they were hard to get. There were a whole bunch of things. So, there was the dough resting-
Jessie Sheehan:
The Feves. I think it was also, and you described it when you were talking about size-
Deb Perelman:
Size.
Jessie Sheehan:
It was the idea of the three textures, if you have the huge cookie you have a crispy edge, a chewy ring, and then a soft center. You're so right, because I read this of course in your blog post, but what David did was I think he interviewed Maury Ruben from City Bakery-
Deb Perelman:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
... and maybe Jacques Torres.
Deb Perelman:
Hi, Maury. We miss you.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think he interviewed Dorie Greenspan, who said everything needs salt.
Deb Perelman:
Salt.
Jessie Sheehan:
But you're exactly right. It was so interesting how David picked what each of these people said. I can't remember where he got the all-purpose bread flour.
Deb Perelman:
At that time at Smitten Kitchen, it was as much a log of cooking I was doing that was fascinating me. That's how it ended up there, where I made it pretty much the way he wanted us to, and talked about what made it interesting, and shared it with readers, and what worked for me, and what I would differently. It was great. It wasn't until many years later that I was like, "Okay, that's cool, but that's not really the way I make them anymore."
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, and we're going to get to that, listeners, I promise, because that's our most recent cookie in 2016. That was the David Lee recipe. That was a consummate chocolate chip cookie recipe. I encourage you all to Google that. You'll find it in the New York Times. It's really an interesting recipe.
Then cut to 2009. You have a crispy chewy recipe on the site, which is actually from All Recipes, which I kind of love that you were finding recipes in all different kinds of places. This one was great. No rest, which as Deb and I just discussed, is not for everyone. No rest. It had a little less flour, less butter than Toll House. It also melted the butter. A little more brown sugar than white sugar, more vanilla, a yolk instead of an egg, which I thought was a really cool addition that adds moisture. Same amounts of chocolate, and lots of vanilla, which I also loved.
Do you remember what drew you, besides everything I just mentioned? Was there something particular about that recipe?
Deb Perelman:
I think back then... Let's see, it's early 2009 and I think I'm starting to shift a little bit, even the first couple of years of my site, where I'm starting to get more into "What do I want?" I started thinking I've gotten to this super fussy chef-y... I'm probably pregnant with my first kid, and I'm like "What do I really want?" I remember that I'd been making this one. I used to make them really large as part of ice cream sandwiches for parties. But I remember I used to use this cookie and I was like I kind of wanted to get back to it because I was remembering, and this is my 80s childhood, but the Duncan Hines crispy chewy commercials, do you remember those?
Jessie Sheehan:
100%.
Deb Perelman:
That song, I'm not going to sing it, but you know the song.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Deb Perelman:
My mom was a big homemade person, but my God, that commercial would come on and we would beg my mom to buy them. And she would once in a while because who could say no to us? We were so charming. That's where I wanted to get back to channeling that. I started wanting to get back to simpler things that I felt worked for a wider audience. I got back to this one and I'm like, "I feel like this is the one I'm going to make on a Thursday night more often."
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, I love that. Which makes sense to me because the ingredients are speaking to me, and I'm like a Thursday night chocolate chip cookie person.
Deb Perelman:
You're not a "Thursday night, I might want it on Sunday person."
Jessie Sheehan:
"I might want this on Monday. Yeah, I'm going to make them now." Oh yeah, that's not me.
Deb Perelman:
But if you are showing off... If I am having people over and I want to... Pretty much up until the cookie we're going to talk about at the end, if I was like "We're going to have a dinner party and let's just think of a really fun dessert," I would bang out that crazy complicated one. I would do the bakery-style one because that's the one that people just can't believe you can make at home. It's such a flex.
Jessie Sheehan:
Also, I just want to say that when you do do that, you bake them off while your guests are there so that you are serving warm cookies.
Deb Perelman:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is that a yes?
Deb Perelman:
Mm-hmm.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, right?
Deb Perelman:
My father-in-law used to say, "It was so nice of you to include a little cookie to connect the piece of chocolate," which was high praise.
Jessie Sheehan:
Right, right.
Deb Perelman:
It's very decadent.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel the same way. If I go to someone's house, even though I don't want to annoy the host, I will say, "I want to bring cookies, but can I bring them not baked and then can I use your oven?"
Deb Perelman:
They don't mind at all.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, because-
Deb Perelman:
They don't mind. It's really fun to do a dessert while people are just hanging out eating.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, like "Oh, I just whipped these up." Okay, so then 2015, we're still talking... This is the amazing thing-
Deb Perelman:
I took a little break after that.
Jessie Sheehan:
You did.
Deb Perelman:
There's a nice break in there.
Jessie Sheehan:
You did. You took six years. Yeah.
Deb Perelman:
I felt like I had covered it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So then 2015, salted chocolate chunk cookie hits the site. It's an Ashley Rodriguez recipe. It's an atypical baking temp, which I thought I would mention. It bakes at 360. It has a little more sugar, more flour, more vanilla, more soda, more chocolate than Toll House. No rest. Ashley adds a little Turbinado sugar, which--
Deb Perelman:
So nice.
Jessie Sheehan:
... is a really nice kind of interesting addition. What you've said about this cookie that I read on the site is that it's like a crumbly dough that's purpose is just to hold the chocolate in place.
Deb Perelman:
It's really lovely. I remember her first cookbook was called Date Night In. It was such a lovely, lovely book. It still is. It's a wonderful book. I remember these chocolate chip cookies were having such a moment that I wanted to try my hand in it. It was so refreshing after sort of battling my two energies of do I want the Toll House style that I grew up with, or Duncan Hines style, or do I want this absolute showy bakery? I think there's all types of chocolate chip cookie bakers in the world. But then, there was Ashley Rodriguez, and it's a little thicker. I want to say it's less hydrated, like if bake it right away and it doesn't spread. It has quite a bit of chocolate in it, and the chocolate is chopped in chunks. I really like the raw sugar in there because I don't know about you, but if you ever buy that Turbinado raw sugar, I'm sure-
Jessie Sheehan:
I do.
Deb Perelman:
Whenever I open the jar, it smells like toasted sugar without having to toast the sugar. It has that toasty quality, so you don't have to add the moisture of brown sugar to get that toasty quality.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's funny, I almost always use it exclusively just to put it on muffins, to put it on loaf cakes, because you get a kind of bakery sparkle and crunch. And so, I love it. But I don't think about actually using it as an ingredient inside the dough or inside my batter. I thought that that was really interesting.
Deb Perelman:
It felt to me very of the moment, and a very modern way to approach a chocolate chip cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah.
Deb Perelman:
Like I said, you'll hand-chop chocolate, some raw sugar which is becoming very readily available and not terribly expensive. It felt really at the moment. I think that's what took me out of my "I'm not doing any more chocolate chip cookies. I'm done with the chocolate chip." The chocolate chip cookie chapter needs to come to an end.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also think even in 2015 that would have been a big deal to have a cookie that was getting a lot of attention that you didn't have to rest, because everybody was resting. I would be on the lookout for that. What? There's a really yummy cookie out there and no one is asking me to rest that?
Deb Perelman:
And you could get a good bar of chocolate. It's not like it's either Toll House chips or Baker's unsweetened squares. There's so much more out there, so you can go take that good chocolate bar a friend bought you, and chop it up into this cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally. Okay, then the last one we're going to discuss before we do the latest from Keepers, is 2016. It's that consummate, that David Lee consummate recipe revisited. This is seven years ago, which is still for most of us... Well, it's a long time ago, but it's not compared to when cookies were first on Deb's site. What I love is, it's just exactly what you've said. You wanted to simplify that recipe. You loved it, but you wanted to simplify it. And this is so smart. Bread flour, plus cake flour, doesn't that equal all-purpose flour?
Deb Perelman:
I mean, that's what I found, but I should also say my goals are not what the original cookie's goals were. I respect that the original cookies, it's about getting a bakery cookie at home. My thought is, how can I get it as bakery-like as possible with what I'm willing to do and what I can easily get at home? The reality is that I had gone through a phase where I started making them a lot again over the couple of years before. Every time... I can't ever make something the same way twice, except for if I'm testing. So, I'm always tweaking.
One time, I just took the weights of both the flours and starting using with all-purpose, and the next time I needed to adjust it, it's a little bit more. Then I was like, "Well, what if I use these discs that cost a little less?" So, I started playing around with just being a little... Just so I could make them at home more often. That was really where it led. Then I was at this point where I felt like I had this great recipe I wasn't sharing, and so I almost reluctantly went back and I said, "Listen, the recipe's different. I hate to beat a dead horse, but it's very different. And it's a lot easier now."
So, you might put it next to Lee's and not feel as exciting, but for me, this was everything I wanted that cookie to do, but no way I could do it at home.
Jessie Sheehan:
I have a question, and I should know the answer, but bread flour is higher protein than all-purpose, and then cake flour is less protein-
Deb Perelman:
I'm about to get in trouble with this because I always think of cake flour as having less protein, but now I'm not positive so I don't want... I feel like I could Google it. It is theoretically because it's usually got a bit of starch in there to soften, but I'm not sure-
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, because I think, to me at least when I read that, it makes sense that if you could combine bread and cake, you might get something... Now obviously-
Deb Perelman:
That's where my brain was when I was doing it, and I did find that I was very happy with rolls. Again, my goal is not about making you feel like... I mean, I want you to have that quality, but with what you can use. If I could get that recipe, what was to me as close of a place as I could find it while using it, that's what I'm... Again, that was not entirely my calling in 2008, but it's everything I think about now and in those years.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also want to say that you basically turned it into a one bowl-ish, or a one bowl recipe.
Deb Perelman:
Absolutely.
Jessie Sheehan:
You did keep some fancy chocolate. What I also just want to say is, I have a thing... I'm sure to some degree you do, I feel like a lot of recipe developers shout this out now, which is number of ingredients. Like, what's nice about combing cake and bread, and just saying it's all-purpose is also that you're not looking at such a long ingredient list. No shame at all for people that write intricate complicated recipes with lots of different ingredients. Amazing. But when you are trying to simplify, it's also nicer to think, "Oh rather than have both of us, could I just do one of those?" I applaud that as well.
Deb Perelman:
It's really all about your... Honestly, half my friends don't even have regular flour at home, nonetheless three kinds. It's just about who the audience is, what your goal is. I've always, as a side thing, this cookie did a great job and I love the version that I did many years later where I feel like "This is what I wanted, that cookie," as a more confident home cook who can really work a recipe to be what I want it to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, and if memory serves, you were still resting it, correct?
Deb Perelman:
I am still resting it. Believe me, I tried to do... You can not rest it, it tends a little flatter and a little puffier. I hate that the resting helps it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know.
Deb Perelman:
I fought it. I fight it.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to get into this when we talk about your recipe from Keepers.
Deb Perelman:
We front-loaded three chocolate chip cookies, and then there was one from a great book that was out, and then I came back and sort of reluctantly worked this one. This second decade, the Smitten Kitchen has had far fewer chocolate chip cookies because I felt like, all right, we've covered this.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back.
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Okay, so this is interesting, despite all these fantastic five chocolate chip cookie recipes on the site, I know that you always struggled with saying, if somebody asked you, what was your favorite, or which one was perfect. Can you tell us why you couldn't come up with a favorite or perfect from those five?
Deb Perelman:
First of all, as a naive youthful blogger, I decided to call something my favorite early on, and people love it. So, I'm like I feel like I can't touch it. Favorite? I mean, it was the favorite then. The book, I really wanted it to be about the forever recipes, and if I was being honest with myself, none of those are. They're all wonderful in different ways, but it wasn't my favorite chocolate chip cookie, my ultimate favorite, what I think a chocolate chip cookie should be. From there, I said, "I think I just have to go for it because I think I know what I want it to be."
Jessie Sheehan:
That's what's amazing about Deb's book, Keepers, because it is all that. You describe it. Tell us what the recipes are. You kind of did when you just mentioned the cookie, but I don't want to put words in your mouth.
Deb Perelman:
Smitten Kitchen Keepers is supposed to be just recipes for your forever files. I understand it's a very tall order. In each of them, I was thinking what is my keeper version of this? Maybe it's not the most accessible chocolate chip cookie, but if I was being honest about there's my favorite forever egg salad, there's my favorite forever roast chicken, that kind of thing. A lot of this is the culmination of all of the years I've been cooking, and the things that I've learned, trying things that I thought were my favorite and kind of putting them together with what I always wish they were more of.
And so, there's a bit of audacity there too. With each of those, I was like what is my real forever favorite of this? I'm like, it's not any of these chocolate chip cookies. It's this other thing I haven't made yet. So, there we go.
Jessie Sheehan:
Totally, and we are so lucky that we get to talk about it right now. The chocolate chip cookie in Keepers is called Chocolate Chip Cookies with Salted Walnut Brittle, and when describing these you have said, "This is the most perfect chocolate chip cookie I could dream up." Can you tell us why?
Deb Perelman:
I think a lot of times when you use things like butter and brown sugar, and you toast it nicely in the oven, we talk about a toffee flavor, or a caramelized flavor. Everyone says it, I never get it. I get glimpses of it, a whiff of it, but I was like what if you put actual caramel in the cookie? An actual crumbly toffee bit? Also, as I admitted early on, I do like nuts in my cookies, but I think the thing is that the nut itself can be a little bland. What if we coated in this sort of salted crumbly toffee? Then you'd get those bits of toffee, you'd get those extra crunchy nuts, and you'd really get that huge flavor boost inside the cookie without anything too crazy in the ingredient list.
But then I had to convince people to make toffee, which I understand is not something people... There are no more steps I can take out of that toffee. It could not be simpler.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's an easy, brittle caramel situation to make. You said, and this is so Deb, but that "You, or the reader, will feel triumphant at having learned a new cooking trick." Brittle is an amazing thing to know how to make because-
Deb Perelman:
Peanut brittle is so good.
Jessie Sheehan:
... you can just eat it. You don't even have to put it in a cookie.
Deb Perelman:
It's such a fun... It really is just granulated sugar in a pot until it melts. If the color is a little off, if you go a step and degree too higher, it doesn't matter. You're just looking for a nice, nutty brown. We add the nuts, just a handful of them. You mix it together, you pour it out on a piece of parchment paper on a tray. You throw it in the freezer five, 10 minutes, 15 tops. Then you just crumble this up and use that brittle.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you've got brittle. It's incredible.
Deb Perelman:
Literally, it's just sugar, nuts, and salt.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. We're now going to do this deep dive into this recipe just because we did it with the other cookies. I just thought I would mention the Toll House comparison here. In this recipe, it's a little bit more flour than Toll House's, that one we discussed peeps, it's like the mother of all chocolate chip cookie recipes. A little bit more flour, a little bit more sugar, a little bit more chocolate, vanilla, soda, and an interesting addition, which is baking powder, which we'll talk about.
First things first, we're preheating our ovens to 350. We're grabbing two baking sheets, a small-ish one and a large-ish one. Do you have a favorite brand of baking sheet?
Deb Perelman:
I don't.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Deb Perelman:
I feel like I'm supposed to, but every time I buy a new one, I'm like "I don't think this is what I want it to be."
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Good to know. Then you're lining with parchment paper. I wondered, do you like parchment that comes in sheets? Do you like them on a roll?
Deb Perelman:
I love the Kana brand parchment sheets in part because I find they're nonstick quality. We do excellent without being too heavy or coated where I feel like I'm creating a... I love that they come in these boxes that I can keep it bookshelf style on top of my fridge, which is really important in a small kitchen. They don't flop over, so I basically just have a... Well, if I said record collection of parchment squares, you'd be like, "What are you talking about?" But it would be the way like records would look on grandpa's bookshelves.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you say the name of the company?
Deb Perelman:
Kana, K-A-N-A.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, I don't even know it.
Deb Perelman:
They've got very cute little boxes. I have that brand parchment, and I usually have some Reynolds too. As I said, I really use those sheets a lot, and they're a splurge, which is to say I'm incredibly cheap about things. But it is a very nice set of precut sheets when you're baking a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
I agree. All right, first things first, we're going to make a walnut brittle. I know the brittle is adding flavor and it's adding texture, and you've said it makes for "Chocolate Chip Cookie Nirvana." They're simple to make. You pour some granulated sugar into a medium/large skillet. Do you have a brand of skillet? And do you like to use not a dark cast iron so you can see the color of the sugar? Or does it not matter?
Deb Perelman:
I don't usually use a cast iron. I'm usually using a stainless steel. I probably have one from All-Clad I use a lot. Or sometimes, like definitely if I am... I have a couple of white-coated non-sticks that are great for demos. I wouldn't say it's the best nonstick on earth, but it's very good for if you're really trying to watch the color or if you're a beginner. You have a lighter-colored skillet, you can do it in that.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're going to cook over medium heat until the sugar is partially liquified, maybe three to four minutes. Then you're whisk. Do you have a favorite whisk brand?
Deb Perelman:
Not at all.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then the sugar melts. You cook it until it's copper-colored and begins to smoke. At this point, we're not whisking anymore. We're just letting it do its thing.
Deb Perelman:
Yeah, there's no harm in it. We talk a lot about crystallization with melted sugar. People get nervous about that, but I find that to be... Again, I'm not an extreme pastry expert, but I find that to be only a risk when you're doing a water caramel, where you start with sugar and water. That's where you have the risk of crystallization. So, stirring isn't really the issue. It's more that if you stir too soon, I feel like you get these big crystal-y chunks, not crystallization, but you get these chunks that are sort of harder to cook out. But if you wait until midway, whatever chunks form immediately melt in the puddle that's there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect.
Deb Perelman:
You don't have to worry about brushing down the sides with water. There's not "Don't stir it or it's going to ruin the pot." You can completely stir it. You just don't need to. You can just look at it. You can tilt it or whatever.
Jessie Sheehan:
And see the color. Great. Then you're going to remove it from the heat and quickly stir in walnuts. Do you have a favorite brand of walnuts?
Deb Perelman:
Absolutely not. Trader Joe's.
Jessie Sheehan:
Trader Joe's, love it.
Deb Perelman:
Yeah, Trader Joe's. I mean, if we grew up near walnut harvest, I would probably have a favorite farm for them, but I don't really see that a ton around here.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you put other nuts in this if you wanted to do pecans or something else?
Deb Perelman:
Absolutely, or if you have allergies. I want to be honest, I haven't tested this with sunflower seeds, but that's one of my favorite swaps if nuts is not an issue, seeds are. I just didn't test this exact recipe with sunflower, and I want to make sure they're not too crunchy, but I think you'd be... It certainly wouldn't be bad.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yum.
Deb Perelman:
But an oily nut is nice here, like walnuts or pecans.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're going to scrape the brittle onto the smaller baking sheet that's been lined, and you're going to quickly spread the brittle as thin as possible, using a spatula. Do you have a favorite spatula?
Deb Perelman:
I have a few small offset spatulas from Ateco brand mostly, because they've lasted for 10 or 14 years.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you use an offset here rather than-
Deb Perelman:
I would use the offset, yeah. If you have it, and I think I do warn people that there's nothing that's going to happen if you don't... It's going to get thick really fast, but nothing bad's going to happen if you don't spread it very thin. It's just a little chunkier to break up.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then you're going to sprinkle with a little flaky sea salt, and you're going to chill in the freezer until solid, maybe 10 or 15 minutes, or stick it in the fridge if you have to. It'll be more like 30 minutes.
Deb Perelman:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we're going to move on to the chocolate chip cookie dough. You're going to beat together your butter. I love this tip. You say that you don't need to soften... Sometimes for people like me who are wildly impatient, and you forget to soften your butter, it's annoying to have to wait for it soften. But you say in this recipe it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be softened before you mix it unless you're using a hand mixer. A stand mixer can 100% soften, make fluffy, et cetera.
Deb Perelman:
Some hand mixers can do it too, but I don't want to be responsible for your hand mixer dying if I tell that it's okay. I would say if you're doing a hand mixer, do more quarter-inch chunks of butter just to be a little gentler on the motors.
Jessie Sheehan:
Was that true for all cookie recipes? Would you say that you can-
Deb Perelman:
I would say so.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you almost never will soften your butter?
Deb Perelman:
That would require planning ahead.
Jessie Sheehan:|
Right.
Deb Perelman:
That's not me. The other reason is that my kitchen is very warm, and my apartment's very warm. My apartment's very warm in the winter because we have steam heating, and my kitchen's very warm in the summer because I don't have an air conditioner in there. So, you take those two things, it's always warm. For me, to start with cooler butter and really cream it, I have a lot more time before it gets too soft, or mushy, or oily-seeming if I start with colder butter. The whole dough is colder.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice.
Deb Perelman:
If the goal is to have a cool dough in the end, like if cold is good for the dough, it makes sense to start with really cold butter. So many have stand mixers these days. Go let them do what they're good at.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yep, that's their job. So you're going to add brown sugar and granulated. Here, there's a little bit more brown than white, which like I've said now a couple of times, it's a little different than the Toll House which had the same amount. Why did you choose a little bit more brown than white for her?
Deb Perelman:
I just felt like it could handle it with flavor, because it's a pretty dense cookie, and brown sugar adds softness. You've got some more wiggle room there if you're trying to soften up the cookie.
Jessie Sheehan:
Nice. And then you're going to add some flaky sea salt. First of all, is there a brand of flaky sea salt that you like?
Deb Perelman:
Jacobson's is wonderful. I really have a big thing of Maldon at home, but it doesn't ... Anything you like.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wonder, first why not kosher salt? Then also, why now? I usually add salt when I'm adding spices, or I'm adding leavening, and I wondered about the choice to put the salt into the cookie now.
Deb Perelman:
I really don't understand why we wait to add salt, genuinely. I'm like, "Let's go flavor that butter. Let's go get that in at the bottom layer. Let's make that butter loud." So I just feel like I don't... I think that we wait because we consider it a dry ingredient and we're sifting the dry ingredients separately. But once you've thrown that out the window... I don't want it to cause people more mental energy where they're pausing and they have to consider it because it's so unusual and it requires more thinking, and therefore the recipe doesn't seem easier. That's something I think about probably too much. But I really do like adding the salt right with the butter.
Jessie Sheehan:
When you say it that way, it makes sense to me because I always add my vanilla with the butter because I've always heard that fat carries flavor, so put your flavor in when you add your fat. So, salt is a flavor. It's how you're seasoning your food, your baked goods.
Deb Perelman:
Let's season that butter that's going to permeate... Remember, think of all the wonderful baked goods that are made with salted butter. We do not consider salted butter standard in this country mostly because it's inconsistent from brand to brand, so bakers don't like writing recipes for salted butter. But it makes sense to just season it from the beginning.
Jessie Sheehan:
A reason that you didn't use kosher here?
Deb Perelman:
I just think that the texture is really nice. I will say though, the big hurdle there though is that flaky salt is incredibly hard to measure by spoon. Weight's ideal. Just go with your gut there.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, there you go. That's all getting in the stand mixer until the butter softens and it gets somewhat fluffy, and light, and... Medium speed?
Deb Perelman:
Probably.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think for a long time I didn't understand when a recipe writer sometimes leaves out an instruction like it says stir, but it doesn't say what the tool is, or it says beat, but it doesn't say the speed. You begin to understand that's giving you, the reader and the maker-
Deb Perelman:
Because it doesn't matter.
Jessie Sheehan:
... a little bit of agency because it doesn't matter.
Deb Perelman:
It doesn't matter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Stir with a spatula, stir with a wooden spoon. We'll only tell you what to use if you use something else that would be problematic.
Deb Perelman:
Otherwise, you end up with a 10,000 word recipe with just every possible option, which I think is reassuring in some ways, but I think for something like this where people have been handling chocolate chip cookie recipes without a ton of instruction for a long time, I don't want to make it-
Jessie Sheehan:
Agreed.
Deb Perelman:
... unlike any other cookie you're making.
Jessie Sheehan:
Agreed. You're going to add an egg and you only add one. Just out of curiosity, a lot of recipes, Toll House included, calls for two. Why one?
Deb Perelman:
I don't like what two eggs do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us what they do.
Deb Perelman:
I feel like it's too cake-y. It was too solid. It just wasn't what I felt like I needed. When you think of something, an egg-free cookie, you're thinking like a shortbread, something very tender. I love tenderness in a cookie, so I feel like more egg, it does a lot of good things, but it might have less tenderness.
Jessie Sheehan:
That seems a little fussy, but would you ever, like what that All Recipes recipe did, and throw in a yolk?
Deb Perelman:
Definitely tested that way, mostly because I want to know. I want to know if it really changes it. Sometimes, I have had to add an extra yolk, but fortunately, this was not one of those places.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then vanilla. Can you share a brand of vanilla?
Deb Perelman:
I've been making my own for a while. I'm otherwise not very loyal to a particular brand. For extract, I will really use anything from McCormick's to Nielson-Massey. I tend to like their... I feel like they have their very popular bourbon vanilla, and I love... I think it's their Tahitian one and their Mexican one are probably my favorite. If you get a sampler set, you can smell them all and they're all really good. I'm not particularly loyal on vanilla extract.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to add our dry ingredients. You do this trick, which I have completely not stolen from you, but borrowed from you-
Deb Perelman:
You're not stealing.
Jessie Sheehan:
... and even in Snackable Bakes, in the beginning of the book, I say, "This is Deb Perelman, and I love her for this." Tell us about how you add... Right now, we're going to begin adding some of our dry ingredients right into the wet. Tell us about this technique.
Deb Perelman:
For me, this is how I one bowl things. How can I one bowl a cake? When we talk about a cake or a cookie, we're usually sifting or whisking the dry ingredients separately. What we're trying to do is we were trying to distribute the leavener throughout the flour so it's evenly distributed. That's the main thing. Once you understand that that's why things are separated, I started playing around with not adding flour and then baking soda, but baking powder, baking... Add the leavener directly to the dough or the batter. Get it really well distributed.
I always say, beat it more times than seems necessary. We're going for full and complete disbursement into there. From there, you've just one bowled it. Now you can just add the flour freely. That's the last ingredient in most of my recipes. It allows me to get things done in one bowl, which makes it the kind of home cooking I want to do.
Jessie Sheehan:
It just seems now, when I think about taking out another bowl... Most recipes start with get a bowl, put in your flour, your leavening, and your salt. Whisk it, set it aside. I'm like, no.
Deb Perelman:
There are some cakes where that careful addition of flour and alternating the liquids can make a really nice difference between having a cake that's okay and a cake that's special. I think it's good to be aware of where we're not going to do that, but for this, this is definitely not one of these. We're not building a cake here. We're building a cookie. So, it doesn't need that floofy layering.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Now we're going to add right into those wet ingredients, we're going to add the baking soda and the baking powder. I did want to ask, why again, Toll House, just soda, what does the powder do here that you like?
Deb Perelman:
It's interesting because in most things, I go baking powder these days. It's more consistent. It's more reliable. You don't have to worry about interactions with things. It's a very great, and solid, and reliable product. It came later than baking soda for a reason. Most old-fashioned recipes only call for baking soda because baking powder didn't exist. Once baking powder existed... That said, I think baking soda browns a little bit better and it can give you a tiny bit more spread. Sometimes with something like a drop cookie, you want a little bit of a both in a way that I don't feel is necessary for most cakes.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to beat thoroughly, just like you said, when you add the leavening you want to make sure it's really well distributed. You're going to scrape your sides. Now you're going to add your flour. Brand of flour?
Deb Perelman:
I'm probably using Gold Medal a lot.
Jessie Sheehan:
Bleached or unbleached?
Deb Perelman:
I think I use either, or I use King Arthur.
Jessie Sheehan:
Just until a few floury patches remain, then you're going to grab that brittle out of your fridge or your freezer, and you're going to smash it up with a mallet or the handle of a chef's knife, or the bottom of a heavy pot. I love that I have so many options. Into little bite-sized chunks. As you said, if you didn't get it as thin as you wanted before it went into the fridge or the freezer, don't worry. It's just now you'll be doing a teeny bit more smashing-
Deb Perelman:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
... if it's a little thicker. Then we're going to add that and we're going to add bittersweet chocolate chips. First of all, I love that you're asking for chips and not for bar chocolate, because I have a love letter to chocolate chips in my last book just because I understand the beauty and power of a bar of chocolate. I do. I do. I do. But it is really easy and nice.
Deb Perelman:
Chips have come so far. Regular grocery stores have these beautiful... I understand. I live in New York, and this is in every grocery store everywhere. My mother always reminds me that her grocery store may not have what mine does, but I feel like there's a lot more variety, even the Trader Joe's where we can get these larger chips, or bittersweet, or a higher quality. Because of that, I don't think that we have to automatically reject chocolate chips. I also felt that I had a giant hurdle inside this recipe, which was this brittle. And so, I wanted to keep everything else... No egg separation, nothing. There was one fussy, one hurdle recipe.
Jessie Sheehan:
Honey, that is why I love you, and that's why everyone else loves you. I love you are thinking about the hurdles. Yes, you're exactly right.
Deb Perelman:
I'm not saying it can be a two hurdle of... The best version of it is a two hurdle recipe, but I didn't feel it was so essential here. Also, bittersweet chips are really nice against the... You're adding the sweet in brittle.
Jessie Sheehan:
No, it makes sense. Is there a particular brand of chips?
Deb Perelman:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay.
Deb Perelman:
I love Guittard chocolate products, but I can't always find them.
Jessie Sheehan:
The mixer is still on when we're mixing, and the brittle, and the chips-
Deb Perelman:
Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, because it can break up the brittle a little bit too if you've got a good stand mixer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect. Perfect. Now we're going to scoop the dough into three tablespoon-size bowls. Do you use a portion scoop?
Deb Perelman:
I do. On this one, I happen to have a scoop that's about three tablespoons, and so I just use that. It's a little smaller than the bakery size, but I did feel like it was really the right size for this. I used to love making my chocolate chip cookies small, and then just eating two of them so I might as well just make them what I consider... To me, the baker size is a little big for one person, so I wanted it to be... I'm not saying you can't have two, and I'm not saying we never have two, but for me I wanted one piece to be a nice... You know you've had enough cookie. Or it's a good amount where-
Jessie Sheehan:
A good size.
Deb Perelman:
... you would not immediately need to reach for a second or feel like you completely need to lay down because the bakery was so much.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like a quarter cup, which would be a tablespoon more, is when you're kind of getting into bakery territory. Three tablespoons. Most recipes are either two or four, so I love that you choose three.
Deb Perelman:
Exactly. Two is like... I just found that with the two, we would be reaching for another. Plus, I did learn a lot from the lead in the bakery studies which is that you do get a little better texture. You have a little more that you can do with the texture with a slightly larger cookie. I felt like this was really the right size. I tried it all the other ways.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Is there a brand of portion scoop that you use at home?
Deb Perelman:
No. I probably have Oxo brand, but I'm not wedded to it at all.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're going to bake in a 350 degree oven until the edges are golden brown and set, but the centers are still a little soft. 10-12 minutes. Kind of a deep golden brown at the edges, cool on the pan, which is on a wire rack, for about five minutes and then serve warm. Although, you did say careful because molten hot caramel is not going to be so nice on your tongue.
Deb Perelman:
I do write recipes like somebody who gets a lot of emails, don't I? You can tell sometimes.
Jessie Sheehan:
You're ready. You're ready.
Deb Perelman:
My weird unpopular opinion, I appreciate a lukewarm cookie, but I actually don't love hot desserts.
Jessie Sheehan:
Interesting.
Deb Perelman:
I know.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, you want it to just-
Deb Perelman:
Maybe I'm just never cold enough in my kitchen to appreciate a warm dessert. It might be climate-related.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love this, the note on the bottom of this recipe says two important things. The first is, that look, this recipe does not call for resting, chilling, whatever you want to call it. I hope I'm not putting words in your mouth, but I think you say yes the cookie will be better because it'll be more craggly and less puffy.
Deb Perelman:
And I said that the photo here is a second day cookie, and I hated it because I wanted... I tested it and developed it as a same day cookie. It's great. I will say the texture's just a little more ripply, a little more cohesive, a little less poufy on the second day.
Jessie Sheehan:
Are you saying a whole 24 hours? Or do you think even-
Deb Perelman:
No, overnight is fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Overnight.
Deb Perelman:
It's just that few hours in the cold-
Jessie Sheehan:
I know it.
Deb Perelman:
... just where it hydrates.
Jessie Sheehan:
What I think in those situations is, I'm going to bake off a couple because I'd said I wanted cookies, I'm eating cookies. But I'm going to try to save the rest to have the next day experience.
Deb Perelman:
I like to think, I hope I do, I warn about if you're going to take them from the fridge, let them warm up a little.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, you do.
Deb Perelman:
I've broken every scooper I've ever owned on cold dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you ever scoop and then rest?
Deb Perelman:
I do that often. I certainly always do it with elite ones just because it was a little easier. Yeah, you definitely can. There's no reason not to.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then the other thing you mentioned, which I want to flag and give Erin Clarkson a little shout out, is you mentioned the cookie scootch.
Deb Perelman:
Scootch.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Deb Perelman:
The scootch, because she's the first person I ever saw do the scootch.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too.
Deb Perelman:
I think you're friendly with her too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes.
Deb Perelman:
I think a lot of people were doing the scootch after her, and that's okay, I guess, but it's really nice if you know where it came from, to talk about where it came from.
Jessie Sheehan:
I 100% agree. Tell us what it is and also tell us why it's especially good for this cookie.
Deb Perelman:
Because otherwise, I'm not Erin. Her stuff is so beautiful, and I am not a perfectionist at all. I love what she does. Because there's caramel in the cookie, you might get little dribbles that spill out. If that bothers you, you can just go grab... What the cookie scootch is, is you take a cookie cutter or a glass that's larger than the cookie, right when it comes out of the oven you put it over the cookie and you just circle it around. You can use it to bump the edges into a clean, neat shape. Erin makes it to make these beautiful cookies. Do we say Cloudy Kitchen?
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, yeah.
Deb Perelman:
Erin is from Cloudy Kitchen.
Jessie Sheehan:
She is.
Deb Perelman:
Drop the name because her baking recipes are so good. To make these really beautiful domed cookies, and it's beautiful. I wasn't going for that shape. I mostly just wanted to make sure that if you had caramel bits that leaked out, and if it bothered you, you could bring them back in. I find that happens more on the first day bake on that cookie than the second day bake. There's less dribbling out.
Jessie Sheehan:
Interesting. Yeah, I love that technique. I 100% learned it from her. I think I still remember when, a cookie event she did. It really is amazing at taking... Even if there isn't a caramel issue, if you make a cookie and it just doesn't have exactly the shape you want... You know what I use? I forget the brand, but it's basically round biscuit cutters in a million different-
Deb Perelman:
Yeah, I have... That's what I have?
Jessie Sheehan:
You know what I mean? Yeah.
Deb Perelman:
Yeah that's what I have.
Jessie Sheehan:
I take the largest one, which is probably, I'm using my hands right now listeners, but I think four inches or something. It fits over every-
Deb Perelman:
That's exactly what I use.
Jessie Sheehan:
... cookie, and literally you just very gently... The only thing I would say is move quickly because depending on your cookie, they do start to set.
Deb Perelman:
Absolutely. I don't want my cookies perfectly round, to be honest. That's why I was like I'm just doing it just in case you've got a real spill of caramel. It doesn't happen that much, but you may not want that. So, you could just bring it in, and then scrunch that caramel right up to the cookie so can get an extra crunchy bite at the bottom.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love it. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today, Deb. I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Deb Perelman:
Oh, thank you very much. I'm very honored.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugra Premium European-Style Butter for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform. And tell your baking buddies about us. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker, and our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie. Happy baking.