Jacques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

💕 Why you'll love this recipe

If you're not familiar, Jacques Torres is a famous pastry chef. He is best known for baking with chocolate. He is often referred to as "Mr. Chocolate" and owns many chocolate shops. He's also one of the judges on the Netflix show "Nailed It!"

This recipe of his makes a nearly perfect chocolate chip cookie! Here's why you'll love it:

• these are chewy cookies on the inside and crisp on the edges
• loaded with chocolate!
• easy recipe to put together
• large cookies that everyone will love

Now, the one con of this recipe is the recommended time for allowing the dough to chill. Like a lot of classic recipes for chocolate chip cookies, chilling is an important step to allow the flour to fully hydrate and to develop flavor.

The original Jacques Torres chocolate chip cookie recipe suggests chilling the dough up to 72 hours for best results. That’s a lot of time to wait for your cookies! I will say these cookies are worth it. But, planning ahead is key with this recipe. 

Are Jacques Torres Chocolate Chip Cookies worth it to make?

I do think these cookies are good enough to wait for and try at least once. 

However, if you ain't got the time or the patience (I certainly don't blame ya one bit!), use My Best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe or my Chocolate Chip Cookies without brown sugar both of which bake up in less than 30 minutes, start to finish. 

And, in the words of my family and friends, "Jacques' cookies are good, but not as good as yours!" I have to say, I agree with them.

🧾 Ingredients & Substitutions

This recipe uses common ingredients used in other chocolate chip cookie recipes with a couple of exceptions. It does require different types of flours and uses chocolate discs rather than chocolate chips. I offer suggested substitutions below.

• Cake flour: cake flour has a lower protein content than all-purpose flour and helps create a tender cookie dough. If you don’t have cake flour, you can substitute with one cup all-purpose flour minus 2 tablespoons of the flour, plus 2 tablespoons cornstarch. Whisk together to aerate and create a light and fluffy flour to add to your cookie dough
• Bread flour: this flour has a higher protein content than all-purpose flour and helps add structure and chew to the cookie dough. If you don't have bread flour, all-purpose flour can be substituted in equal amounts. The texture of the cookie may change with this substitution
• Baking soda
• Baking powder
• Salt
• Flaky sea salt: can be substituted with any coarse salt for sprinkling on top of the cookie dough just before they're baked
• Unsalted butter
• Light brown sugar
• Granulated Sugar 
• Large eggs: remove the eggs from the fridge at least 30 minutes prior to baking to allow them to reach room temperature. This will allow the eggs to incorporate evenly into the chocolate chip cookie dough 
• Vanilla extract
• Bittersweet chocolate disks or fèves, at least 60 percent cacao content: typically, our favorite chocolate chip cookies call for semisweet chocolate chips to be used in the dough. If you cannot find feves or chocolate disks, chocolate chips may be substituted

🥣 Step by step tutorial

Step 1: In a medium bowl, sift together the dry ingredients (flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt). Set aside

Step 2: Using a stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment or with a hand mixer, cream butter and sugars until very light in color, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla.

Step 3: Reduce the mixer speed to low speed and add the flour mixture, mixing until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds.

Step 4: Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them, as much as possible.

Step 5: Press plastic wrap against the top of the dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.

Step 6: When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350º F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat and set aside.

Step 7: Remove chilled dough from the fridge. Using a large ice cream scoop, scoop cookie dough into six 3-½ ounce balls of dough (the size of generous golf balls) onto baking sheet, making sure to turn horizontally any chocolate pieces that are poking up; it will make for a more attractive cookie. Sprinkle lightly with flaky salt, if using, and bake until golden brown, but still soft, 18 to 20 minutes.

Step 8: Transfer sheet to a wire rack for 10 minutes, then slip cookies onto another rack to cool a bit more.

Step 9: Repeat with remaining dough, or reserve dough, refrigerated, for baking remaining batches the next day

👩‍🍳 Pro tips for making this recipe

• If you do not have bread and/or cake flours, you can easily substitute all-purpose flour for this combination. In a NY Times interview about his famous cookie recipe, Jacques Torres said "you could certainly use all-purpose and most likely would not notice a significant difference unless you were to make both recipes and compare them side by side. If you were to use cake flour only, however, your cookies would most likely flatten out when baked."
• I recommend weighing your ingredients (those listed with grams next to them in the ingredient list) using a kitchen scale for this recipe. The scale that's linked here is the exact same one I use and it's less than $10 on Amazon. Totally worth the investment. Measuring your ingredients by weight helps eliminate error in how the ingredients were measured. And this eliminates any variance in the consistency of the finished cookie. If you do not wish to invest in a scale, do your very best to measure your ingredients as accurately as possible using best practice baking methods of measurement like those listed here
• As in all my recipes, I recommend using the highest quality ingredients you can afford. For these cookies, I used Guittard's Baking Wafers. They aren't cheap, however, the flavor will certainly be the best with high quality chocolate
• The dough is a bit difficult to scoop out when it’s chilled, so I recommend scooping the portions of dough before chilling. Place the portions on a lined cookie sheet, cover with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight or for up to 72 hours before baking
• As I mentioned above, this dough calls for chilling overnight or up to 3 days. Jacques Torres himself said in the NY Times interview regarding this recipe that he recommends chilling the dough overnight, not for 3 days. I have seen other bloggers indicate that the time does make a difference and they recommend chilling for 3 days. I would go with the chef's recommendation here! It'll save you time and still result in a very flavorful cookie

❓FAQs

Check out all my cookie recipes here!