I always strive for “perfect”. Partially I think it’s what’s made me good at things like playing the violin and piano. The only way to get good at an instrument is to practice and for a long time my practice was motivated on being able to play “perfectly”.
So naturally, in baking I’ve also strived for “perfection” even though I’m very aware perfection doesn’t exist. But being self-aware has never stopped me before!
Given all of that once I finished university work in June I committed myself to make my own recipe for the “perfect” chocolate chip cookie.
I’ve been baking since I was a child and chocolate chip cookies are my specialty. I make them all the time. For family parties, Christmas and mainly for birthdays, they’re kind of my thing.
My go-to cookie recipe has changed a lot over the years. From using recipes from the back of the Nestle chocolate chip package, to exploring baking blogs for the first recipe to being almost religiously devoted to Sally’s Baking Addiction. But I’ve always wanted to have my own recipe, find a way to combine them all and learn to make the type of cookies I love from bakeries at home.
The opportunity to fully explore this finally came with lockdown!
My main post exam task was recipe testing. Initially I planned 6 different recipe tests. Then deciding I actually didn’t want to eat like dozens of cookies I decided to combine some and left it at 3 core tests.
I did three well thought out tests using different flours, leavening agents, butters and sugars. Then we got to the final test. The breakthrough, the eureka moment if you will. The day I finally made a “perfect” chocolate chip cookie I personally love, on par with bakery cookies.
Then around 3 weeks later I tried scaling up to make a full batch and all the progress disappeared.
For context I can’t do fractions, I’m tragically bad at ratios which are unfortunately only really useful for baking. I scaled up my previous recipe but come the baking day the cookies didn’t come out like the small batch ones I made. They were thin and crispy, maybe too much butter or eggs I’m unsure. The still tasted good, but they weren’t the “perfect” cookies I’d made two weeks ago.
I was really disappointed. Fundamentally, I was frustrated because I couldn’t make the perfect cookie twice even with the same recipe. A part of me felt like I’d failed at my original task.
But then I had to remind myself I’m probably never going to make the exact same cookies I’d made before and more importantly that this experiment was never really about getting the elusive “perfect” cookie. It was about challenging myself and trying something new. It was finding something that gave me joy in such a weird time. Ending university made me feel purposeless for a while and I’ve never dealt with that well. This alleviated that for a few days or a few hours and that I’m grateful for. It gave me a goal I’d wanted to achieve and steps to do it and gave me something to fill my days. It gave me something to be excited about in a time where literally everything felt confusing and sad and wrong. Maybe I’ll never make the “perfect” cookie and I’ll always be tweaking this recipe for years to come until I figure out what tastes the best. Maybe what really came out of this was learning to trust the process and that learning through the process is a lot more fun than getting the “perfect” end result.
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