Cooking For Engineers

[Nef]

For years, I made these cookies without walnuts. My boyfriend adores walnuts, though, and I find myself making chocolate chip cookies with walnuts instead. From the first, I ran into problems. Mainly, I was chopping a bit indiscriminately and winding up with too many nuts for my dough. Silly me, I added them anyway. My cookies came out runny, crumbly, and more suitable for trail mix. I realized after several batches that it was excessive walnuts.

I wildly speculate that it is the excess oils in the nuts causing the problem. Is that the case? If I should actually want to increase the nuts, should I decrease the amount of butter?

Oh, and I also recall the shortening in the Toll House recipe. The reason I remember it is because Nana told me to always substitute real butter when I make them if I want to make "her cookies." Now, everyone makes her variation.

[Charlene]

My mother has been making Nestle cookies ever since I can remember. But it was my sister in law that 'perfected' it in my opinion. First of all, we add an additional 1/4 cup of flour to the recipe. We double the vanilla, and only use ONE egg, not two. Next, the butter absolutely needs to be at room temperature. The cookies turn out thick and full, not flat, and retains chewey goodness and flavor.

[kira]

my chocolate chip cookies i make are at low altitude, but they rise very well and taste very good.

set oven to 375˚
-2 3/4 cup flour
-1 1/8 tsp. baking soda
-five or six shakes of salt from a salt shaker
-2 cups (2 sticks) butter halfway melted
-3/4 cup sugar
-3/4 cup packed brown sugar
-1 tsp. vanilla
-2 eggs
-2 cups nestle toll house chocolate chips
beat all of this together at once and then add chocolate chip cookies. use your hands to mix in the chocolate chip cookies. i know the hands thing helps some how. but the dough should be moderately stiff.
roll the dough into 2 inch. balls and place on cookie sheet. bake 10-11 minutes.

[Michael Chu]

[Rhaz]

There used to be a recipie for brownies on the back of the Toll House package about 16 to maybe 20 years ago, it may even be more I don't remember. I have searched all my saved recipies packages, books ect, and it's just not there. I have searched the net for it...nothing, but I did find this place. I hope some one here has it and can post it. Thanks!

Rhaz

[AuntieAndie]

This is my Gran's copy of the Original Toll House Inn Chocolate Chip Cookies, which she placed in her 1939 handwritten cook book. Since it was handwritten, I cannot verify that it is the original but the time is right and she lived in W. Virginia and traveled often:

1 1/8 cups sifted white wheat flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 c. shortening
1/4 c. brown sugar
1/2 c. granulated sugar
1 large egg, beaten
1 tsp. vanilla extract
8 ounces semisweet chocolate (bar or pieces)
1/2 c. walnuts

Sift flour, soda and salt together. Cream shortening and sugars together. Add egg and vanilla. Blend thoroughly. Add sifted ingredients. Cut chocolate into small pieces if bar is used. Fold in nuts and chocolate. Drop from teaspoon onto greased baking sheet. Bake in moderate oven (350) about 10 minutes. Makes 50 cookies.

They taste great, are chewy and crisp. Give them a try :-)

[Ella]

Try substituting Bran Buds cereal for the nuts called for in the recipe (equal measure). The Bran Buds add a nice nutty touch without the harder crunch.

BTW - ever note when you type a response, you cannot spell!!! I sure wish these things had spell checker - but at least they have preview. One would think I didn't know a word of English if I couldn't go back in and fix all the typo's...

[amlr]

A friend of mine loves NTHC without the chips. When ever we are making cookies to send out we make some without the chips and then add the bag to the rest of the dough. My girls love the chipless ones and the extra chippy ones that result.

[marmataz]

Chocolate chip cookies are my favorite inanimate objects on earth.

A few things the creator of this recipe, Ruth Wakefield, would do that got lost on the way to the current recipe on the Nestle bag are:

1. She dissolved the baking soda in a teaspoon of warm water before mixing into batter. I am not sure if she still added it to the flour after this.
2. She refrigerated the dough overnight, so upon baking the cookies they came out at least twice the thickness of what you have pictured.
3. She did sift her dough. I have no idea how you came up with your calculations, but you're killing your mixer.

A few of my own side notes:

These cookies are best if you don't mix the batter too intensely, especially the eggs. If you are using an electric mixer, stop about halfway before the eggs are as pulverized as you believe they could be. The rest will work after you add in the flour mixture.

I prefer a better chocolate such as Baker's semi-sweet squares, coarsely chopped. It's not quite as sweet and has a richer flavor, considering the dough is already pretty sweet.

I sub 1/4 cup of white sugar for an extra 1/4 cup brown sugar instead.
I sub a tablespoon of butter with a tablespoon of unrefined coconut oil to give it an imperceptible enhancement in flavor.

Mexican vanilla and kosher salt make a big difference in overall flavor.

These cookies will ruin your life and are roll your socks up and knock your d*ck in the dirt good.

My next plan is to add a bit of ground instand coffe into the mix.

[Guest]

I have been making these cookies for over 20 years. For some reason, a couple of years ago they started becoming flatter and flatter. I kept thinking I must have missed an ingredient or messed up the quantities (kind of hard to do.) Still flat.

I tried new baking soda, new flour . . . still flat . . . so flat I have to scrape them off the sheet. They are not even cookies anymore.

What am I doing???? This just isn't that hard a recipe!

[Cjaxx]

I follow this recipe exactly, but my cookies always come out tasting like pillsbury sugar cookies with chocolate chips in them. I HATE pillsbury sugar cookies! I have used all different types of brown sugar, flour, and different sizes of eggs! What am I doing wrong? Do anyone else's cookies taste like this?

[OddNina]

Thank you for putting up the gramms sometimes i get really mad at you americans for having your own measurements its hard enough to figure out things to replace the american ingredients

[Drummer's wife]

Trying to create the Nestle Toll House cookies that my mother was famous for, & I happened upon this site after 2 days (and 2 batches!) that were tossed in the trash after carefully following the Nestle recipe. I, too, recall distinctly that my mother used Crisco (and she used the recipe from the Nestle chip bag) and her cookies looked nothing like the cookies on the Nestle site. Like a recent poster stated, her cookies were very light tan (whitish, almost) and they were rounded & jumbly looking. Not the least bit flat at all! Mine were flat & greasy. Yuck! I will now try for a 3rd time, this time using Crisco (as the original recipe called for).
I will keep checking back & hope that some kind soul is able to locate the Nestle recipe that prevaled in the 50's and 60's. Surely lots of people have that gem kicking around! Thanks for a truly enlightening site.

[Dilbert]

>>Crisco

do be aware - Crisco has changed its formulation in the trans-fat flappola.

many bakers have found the "new Crisco" does not work quite like the "old Crisco"

[Drummer's wife]

Thank you, Dilbert; you've confirmed my suspicions. I just made one sheet of cookies (w/Crisco) and they were still flat! That's when I decided that Crisco must have changed their potion. My next idea was to take the advice of a poster who said she always adds 1/2 Cup extra flour to every cookie recipe?! So I added 1/2 C flour to the batter (minus one sheet of already-made cookies) and HOSANNA - my mother's cookies at last!

My heartfelt thanks to the poster with that wild-sounding suggestion. It truly worked. For what it's worth, I also took the liberty of changing the sugars to 1 C brown and 1/2 C white, and I doubled the Vanilla.

Thanks to the wonderful posters on this site! I strongly advise those who are having the problem w/flat Tollhouse cookies to add an additional 1/2 Cup + a teaspoon or two of flour to the batter (for the 12 oz. bag o'chips). You'll get thick, jumbly-looking cookies that aren't flat or greasy.