Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars Recipe - Dessert for Two (2024)

FAQs

Can I replace chocolate chips with chocolate bar? ›

But when it comes to making other things like ganaches, cake batters, and candies, can you swap the higher-priced bars for common chocolate chips? The answer is yes… most of the time. Even though the fat and chocolate ratios are different, you can swap out chocolate bars for ganaches, sauces, frostings, and cakes.

When adding the flour, be careful not to overmix. (Don't mix too vigorously or too long – follow recipe directions.) Overmixing develops the gluten in the flour, which can produce tough bars. If the recipe doesn't call for an electric mixer, mix in dry ingredients using a wooden spoon.

Despite their rigid shape, chocolate bars offer a lot of versatility to the home baker. Perhaps the most obvious use is as a substitute for chocolate chips in a cookie recipe, with roughly chopped irregular chunks, slivers, and crumbly bits studding the dough instead.

Use chopped chocolate if you want a professional looking chocolate chip cookie that looks like it was made by a bakery. If you want larger pools of chocolate in your cookie, roughly chop the chocolate bar into 1- to 2- inch pieces.

Different types of sugars affect the texture because they absorb different amounts of water. Remember moisture is the key! White sugar creates crispier cookies and brown sugar creates chewier cookies.

Room temperature butter is just the right consistency to incorporate air when it's creamed with sugar. These trapped air pockets result in risen, fluffy cookies. If the butter is any warmer, it won't incorporate enough air and your cookies will have less rise.

Bar cookies baked in insulated baking pans often don't brown well. Try baking bars longer than called for in your recipe. Realize that most published recipes are not developed using insulated pans. Ideally, only bake one baking pan of bar cookies at a time, placing it on a rack in the middle of the oven.

Putting a slice of fresh white bread in the container with the cookies will help the cookies stay soft: fresh bread is moist, and that slice will give up its moisture for the greater good: keeping the cookies from drying out.

Why add baking soda to chocolate chip cookies? ›

Baking soda also serves another important purpose when it comes to cookies: It encourages spreading by raising the mixture's pH, which slows protein coagulation. This gives the dough more time to set before the eggs set, which results in a more evenly baked cookie.

Using too much flour will make your cookies too cakey, so try reducing the flour amount by two tablespoons. Avoid using cake flour instead; try a mix of all-purpose flour and bread flour for a more dense and chewy texture. Using too much baking powder. According to the science geeks at Serious Eats—we love you!

If you're after a sweeter flavor, opt for milk or white chocolate, but if you want to break down the already sweet cookie dough, go for semisweet or dark chocolate.

All-Purpose Flour: The Versatile Choice

This balanced protein level makes it versatile enough to produce both soft and chewy cookies as well as slightly crisp ones. If you're looking for a safe bet or are new to cookie baking, all-purpose flour is your go-to option.

The type of chocolate typically used for chocolate chip cookies is semisweet or bittersweet chocolate. These chocolates have a higher percentage of cocoa solids and are less sweet than milk chocolate, making them perfect for balancing the sweetness in the cookie dough.

Swapping out chocolate chips for pieces of smooth and sweet milk chocolate candy means you get more chocolate in every bite, which is a beautiful thing. If you want to add a little more crunch to your recipe, try using a HERSHEY'S Milk Chocolate with Almonds Giant Bar , cut into bite-sized bits.

Chocolate Chips Versus Chocolate Bars

A product like chocolate chips (whose goal is to keep its chip shape throughout baking) will contain less cocoa butter (if any) and more lecithin. In comparison, a bar of chocolate will boast the opposite ratio, containing less lecithin and more cocoa butter.

Perhaps counterintuitively, a serrated knife doesn't need to be sawed back and forth to chop chocolate. Instead, the gentle downward pressure you provide moves it through solid chocolate like a table knife through butter, allowing you much more control of the ultimate size of the pieces.

1 (1 ounce) square semi-sweet chocolate = 3 tablespoons semi-sweet chocolate chips or 1 (1 ounce) square unsweetened chocolate (or equivalent from above) plus 1 tablespoon sugar.