SQUARE Chocolate Chip Cookies

Who says that cookies have to be circular?

This Instructable is a slight deviation from what I usually do (practical science, engineering, techy stuff), but I felt that this story and recipe is worth sharing.

I bake cookies as a side gig at a non-profit cafe in my university. Prior to this, I've never baked cookies before, so I wasn't aware of cookies expanding/flattening out when you bake them. So yea...veteran cookie bakers will probably know what my first batch looked like. However, the disaster of my first batch gave me an idea. Who says that cookies have to be circular? Circles are actually pretty annoying to work with. In my experience, you only need circles when you want something to roll, and cookies don't need to do that. Squares on the other hand, are much more space efficient, so you can pack in a lot more cookies onto a single tray, which gives me an advantage when working in a cafe setting.

I believe in the concept of minimalism-- where sometimes, less is more. Instead of applying this technique to all different types of cookies, I decided to stick with chocolate chip cookies, optimize the recipe, and make them the best cookies, square chocolate chip cookies, possible.

My cookies have been hailed as the "best chocolate chip cookies on campus" by my university's campus food review bloggers, so I think it's fair to say that my efforts have paid off. Now I want to share my experience with baking cookies and the recipe with everyone.

Here are the ingredients we will need. This is the recipe I use to make 8 dozen (96 cookies) batches at the cafe (each cookie is about 1.5" x 1.5").

- 5 cups of white flour

- 1 lb of salted butter

- 4 cups of white sugar

- 2 cups of brown sugar

- 4x eggs

- 2 cups of chocolate chips

- Vanilla extract

- Salt

- 1 teaspoon baking soda

- 1 teaspoon baking powder

You will also need some basic kitchen stuff like:

- A mixing bowl

- A measuring cup

- A knife

- Stuff like that...

Step: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius).

Comments: Veteran bakers probably know this, but rookie bakers BEWARE, make sure to preheat the oven before making the batter, or else you will waste a lot of time waiting and disappointing a lot of people. That moment when you have to tell people that you don't have cookies for them because you forgot to preheat the oven...

Step: Take your entire pound of butter and cut it up such that it fits in a measuring cup. Then microwave the butter until all of the butter has melted.

Comments: I am no means an expert at the science of cooking, and I have met a lot of people who swear by the amount they melt their butter, but for my square cookies which are chewy and soft, I find that melting the butter all the way through gives the best results.

If you have a stand mixer, feel free to melt the butter to whatever you feel like as you have the luxury of letting electrons do the work, but at my cafe, we do not have a stand mixer, so I have to mix the entire thing with a spoon. I can tell you from experience that mixing cookie batter with hard butter by hand is equivalent to going to the gym and doing tricep extensions for 2 hours. This will make it easier for you to mix by hand and also allows the dry ingredients to mix more uniformly as the only wet ingredients we have in this recipe are the eggs and the melted butter.

Step: Dump the melted butter into a mixing bowl. Add the 5 cups of white all-purpose flour, 4 cups of white cane sugar, and 2 cups of brown sugar. Mix.

Comments: I've heard that it is usually a good idea to alternate wet and dry ingredients to make a more uniform mixture. I guess that makes sense, but if you mix hard enough eventually everything will mix...but the main reason why I don't add the eggs now is because the melted butter is pretty hot. If I add the eggs now I will cook them...and that's not really that good for the cookies. Adding all the dry ingredients and mixing will drastically cool down the butter and at the same time, the cooling/solidifying butter will get all the dry ingredients to pseudo-hold together.

Step: Add the four eggs and mix thoroughly.

Comments: This is really cool. You can really see what the purpose of the eggs are in cookies. You can see the batter in the first picture without the eggs. See how the batter still looks like a pile of discolored flour? Now after I add the eggs in and mix, everything starts to stick together and it actually looks like batter!! So cool. I once had to make egg-less vegan cookies before (I used applesauce as a substitute) and oh boy-- you would not believe how much of a difference eggs make when it comes to making cookies. Worship the eggs!

Step: Add the teaspoon of baking soda and baking powder. Add a shake of salt. Add a couple drops of vanilla extract.

Comments: I honestly don't know why we need to add baking soda and baking powder, during my training session they told me to add some when you are making cookies, and it doesn't seem to be doing any harm so... If anyone knows why, feel free to tell me in the comments. I've heard that salt helps contrast the sugar and bring out the cookies' sweetness, but I'm not sure if that's the real reason. Vanilla just makes cookies smell (and taste?) good.

Step: Mix until everything sticks together and to the point that the batter no longer looks like flour, but looks smooth, has a uniform color, and can hold its shape.

Comments: If you have a stand mixer, now is the time to use it again. If not, time to use some elbow grease. At least you can skip arm day.

Step: Add chocolate chips to your taste. I tend to use 2 cups.

Comments: Chocolate chip cookies have chocolate chips in them. Duh. I know I know, I'm not using chocolate chips in this picture, the cafe was out of chocolate chips at the time of writing, so I made square peanut-butter-chip cookies instead.

Step: Mix

Comments: Well, now you can skip two arm days.

Step: Get a baking pan, dump the batter on it and spread it uniformly until to covers the entire surface of the pan.

Comments: Getting the batter to cover the entire surface is pretty crucial here. Cookie batter tends to spread and morph and do other weird things in the oven when no one is looking, so making sure the batter has a well-defined boundary (i.e. the side of the pans) ensures good-looking results. Otherwise you'll end up with something like the first time I tried making square cookies (look at the last picture), where I used a baking pan that was slightly too large.

Also, try to make sure the batter has a uniform thickness over the entire plate, otherwise some spots might burn and other spots might not even cook all the way. Try to make sure there are no holes in the layer of batter, but if there are small ones that's no problem. When the batter bakes, it'll spread and cover the holes.

Step: Throw it in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes.

Comments: Regular cookies typically take about 9-12 minutes to bake, but these cookies are bigger and slightly thicker so they take quite a while to bake. 20 minutes is a good estimate, but keep baking until the surface looks crunchy and turns a light brown color.

Step: Let the giant cookie cool, then cut into little squares and serve.

Comments: After taking it out of the oven, the butter in the cookie is in a liquid state, so the cookie is very soft and jiggly. Let it cool and solidify, and then proceed to cut the cookie into individual squares. Serve!