The Great Cookie Experiment

Inspiration thanks to Alton Brown's Puffy Cookie and Chewy Cookie episode.  I love Alton.  I love food science.  I'm always up for an experiment in the kitchen.  So when Steve suggested we make our work cookie exchange baking session into an experiment I was all for it.  Here are the results.

The Puffy

Notable ingredients include solid shortening, baking powder, and *cake flour.

The sticky dough.

Puffy dough all balled up.

Balls of goodness.  Very easy to scoop.

Puffy perfection.

The Chewy

Notable ingredients milk, melted butter, baking soda, and *bread flour.

Liquid dough.  I was worried at this point that we would end up with a cookie cake.

It eventually came together into a sticky pile of dough. 

Chewy perfection.

The official comparisons...

PUFFY                                               CHEWY

golden brown                                     darkly browned

light and airy                                       dense

raised                                                  flat

crumbly                                               sticky

cake-like                                             still a cookie

shortening                                           butter

baking powder                                   baking soda

For taste, the chewy cookie wins.  It was buttery and doughy and satisfying to eat.  This is what I think of when I want a cookie!

For appearance, the puffy cookies take the gold...golden brown that is.  The chewy cookies were verging on burnt, even though they didn't taste this way.  The puffy cookies browned better and looked like a text book cookie.

All cookies will be taken to Steve and my places of employment.  Perhaps we will expand the voting!

*We did not use cake or bread flour.  All purpose, all the way.  So I can't comment on how much a difference that would make.