For Divinely Chewy, Gooey Cookies, Do This To Your Butter First

There is little that uniformly tempts like a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie. Whether you like yours slightly crispy and crunchy or barely baked through, each bite of golden-brown caramelized dough studded with luscious chocolate is a thing of beauty. For a cookie that leans denser and more toothsome, your surefire way to a perfect texture every time is to melt your butter before incorporating it into the dough mixture.

This clever little tip is employed by commercial bakers and takes no time at all. In fact, melting the butter in the microwave can take as little as 30 seconds on a low setting. The hack delivers because melted butter incorporates less air into your dry ingredients when mixed with them compared to cold or room-temperature butter. This makes the overall texture a bit more solid. Whether you've melted it on the stovetop or used the microwave, just be sure to let the melted butter cool slightly so that your cookies don't overly spread on the sheet tray leaving you with one giant, albeit delicious, cookie.

To further play with the mouthfeel of classic chocolate chip cookies, consider swapping out a portion of your all-purpose flour with a different type of grain. For a more tender cookie, you might try corn flour or go with buckwheat for a vaguely nutty profile. Just avoid common cookie mistakes when you are playing with your recipe, like forgetting to refrigerate the dough (which can impact texture and flavor), leaving out the salt or extract, or the cardinal sin of being tempted by the freshly baked aromas and not letting the cookies cool before removing from the tray.

If you are going for peak slow-motion, hard-to-pull-apart chewiness, make sure to melt your butter, let it cool, and consider adding some feuilletine to your mixture. Feuilletine is a pastry industry-standard ingredient that resembles crushed wafer cookies and binds the dough in a pleasing way, while retaining its signature crunch during baking. Also, make sure to give more than a cursory thought to your chocolate of choice. A combination of chocolate chips and chocolate chunks will yield a supremely pleasing contrast of creamier and more solid chocolatey bits in each bite that simply demands a glass of milk with each bite.