Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today we made chocolate chip cookies; we also started brownies for tomorrow.  In class we are grouped in pairs.  My partner is Allison and I'm really lucky she is my partner because she has previous culinary training, so she can help me along.  I was very happy with how our cookies came out.  They spread nicely and were a perfect brown color. 

I came home to implement my Splenda substitutions.  Apparently, there is no pure brown Splenda like white Splenda.  The white Splenda can be substituted in recipes using 1:1 substitution ratio.  The packaged brown Splenda is called Splenda brown sugar blend.  It is recommended to use a 1:2 substitution ratio of Splenda brown sugar blend to regular brown sugar.  This complication has encouraged me to look into using liquid sucralose or molasses and Splenda as substitutes when recipes call for brown sugar. 

For today, I substituted 1/3 of the white sugar for white Splenda.  I substituted all of the brown sugar with half the volume using Splenda brown sugar blend.  As I would expect using much less sugar in the recipe, the cookies did not spread as much and were not browned as much as the original (full sugar) recipe.  The cookies had a dry crumbly texture.  Because of less spread, the cookies were thicker.  The original cookies were more crisp.  Next time, I will try to add molasses and not use any brown sugar blend.  I might add baking soda as well.

The recipe I used appears below.  Units are in grams because in practice, I am only making quarter recipes, so using grams makes weighing ingredients on the digital scale much easier.  Sugar and Splenda equivalents are listed at the end of this post.

Chocolate Chip Cookies
(yields about 16 4" cookies)

150 g half butter and half shortening
40 g sugar
12 g Splenda (equal volume to 80 g white sugar)
40 g Splenda brown sugar blend (equal volume to 60 g brown sugar)
4 g salt
90 g eggs
5 g (1 t) vanilla extract
300 g all purpose flour
4 g (3/4 t) baking soda
420 g Ghirardelli 60% cocao bittersweet chocolate baking chips

Cream butter, shortening, sugars, and salt.  Add egg and vanilla.  Blend until combined.  Add flour and soda.  Blend partially.  Add chocolate chips and mix all ingredients until just blended.  Scoop with ice cream scoop onto parchment lined baking sheets and bake 10 mins at 375 or until cookie edges are browned.

The recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookies in Professional Baking by Gisslen turned out delicious, except the cookies were quite crisp.  Although, I may have overdone them a bit. Below is a picture of the cookies from the original recipe.  Notice the good spread. 

Splenda-sugar conversions:
2 c sugar, granulated = 420 g (14.1 oz)
2 c Splenda = 120 g (4.0 oz)