I thought I'd get to the bottom of this deeply important question by testing out two cookie recipes: a really simple one and a really complicated one.
After searching far and wide, I settled on these two recipes: a simple 5-ingredient recipe and a more complicated 12-ingredient recipe developed by Nailed It!'s Jacques Torres, which has to sit in the fridge for 72 hours before you bake it.
First things first: ingredients!
Once the fancy chocolate arrived, we were off to the races.
I started making the 12-ingredient dough since it has to rest for a few days, and that went pretty smoothly. The whole thing took about 40 minutes, not including the time I left the butter out to soften.
The last step was to add the chocolate discs, which I had to do very gently so they wouldn't break. It was surprisingly difficult to get them folded into the dough, but it all came together at the cost of my (very well-washed) hands.
Time to rest in the fridge for 72 hours! See ya later, cookie dough!
After three days, it was baking time! But first, while the 12-ingredient dough was softening outside the fridge, I had to make the 5-ingredient dough...and I cannot overstate how easy this one was.
Here's what both doughs looked like once they were done.
After scooping them onto two baking sheets, they were ready for the oven.
A few minutes later, it was finally cookie o'clock!
In order to judge which of these is the better cookie, I'd normally enlist the help of my friends and coworkers, but since we are all safely social distancing, my mom and I were going to be the only deciders.
First things first: appearance. Not the most important aspect of a cookie, but presentation matters! I thought I'd ask my Instagram friends to weigh in on this via poll. Here's what they said:
After biting into each cookie, the next thing we took notice of was the texture of each. The 5-ingredient cookies were definitely softer, but the 12-ingredient ones were a lot crumbier in the way you'd expect a cookie to be.
Now for the final rubric, the flavor! The 5-ingredient cookies were definitely more bland, where the 12-ingredient ones were richer and sweeter, and I mean A LOT sweeter.
Taking all these things into consideration, it was finally time to decide which cookie is actually better. Drumroll, please!
We both agreed that the 12-ingredient ones look and feel more like chocolate chip cookies, but their intense flavor makes it hard to eat more than one at a time.
On the other hand, my mom has already eaten five of the 5-ingredient ones. Their cute, dumpling-like appearance and unassuming but still tasty flavor made them more approachable.
There's also the matter of how long they each took to make, and guys, those 12-ingredient cookies are complicated. You have to get so many different ingredients, and one of them is BREAD FLOUR.
When I think about a chocolate chip cookie, I think of comfort and ease. Even though they might not be the most traditional chocolate chip cookies, the fact that I can throw the 5-ingredient ones together without much stress is a big selling point.
After much deliberation, here is our final decision:
And that's it! Thanks for following this journey with me, now go make these cookies and decide for yourself!
