Off-List Adventure: Homemade Chipwich Sandwiches

My husband and I recently celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary, and we had picked out a dessert to make that was basically the size of a cake, but it was an enormous chipwich (2 chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream in the middle and rolled in mini chocolate chips… for those of your who didn’t know). I had seen it in one of those Tasty Kitchen videos on Facebook. We were going to be heading to the beach the next day though, so we decided to make regular sized chipwich sandwiches and just take the remaining chocolate chip cookies with us to the beach.

In case you didn’t see on my Instagram, I received the most amazing gift of a Kitchenaid stand mixer from my wonderful husband (thanks, Zack!!!) for our anniversary, so I was super excited to bake these cookies. And irrationally said that the mixer was why the cookies were so good.

But the real reason lies in the recipe, which I will of course share with you below. This is an incredible chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I’ll be honest, a little rich for making chipwiches with. I couldn’t even finish mine. But it was SO tasty.

We all know that butter makes everything taste better. No surprises there. But the trick to an amazing chocolate chip cookie is browned butter. I’ve made a lot of cookies in my day. Cookies are actually my very favorite thing to bake, ever. But browning the butter for chocolate chip cookies leads to literally the best chocolate chip cookie ever. I’d like to say that I figured that out on my own, but alas, America’s Test Kitchen figured it out well before I did. That’s why they get paid the big bucks.

Enjoying my chipwich!

Lessons learned here:

1. A cookie scoop truly is the best way I’ve found to get perfect cookies. They’re the right size, they’re fairly uniform, and they have a great round shape. If you like to bake, get one. They’re cheap and you’ll love it.
2. Don’t put this batter in the fridge. I’ve heard in the past that is the way to get good cookie dough. But this particular recipe isn’t cut out for that. I tried to put it in the fridge in between batches while we went out to dinner and it just got ROCK hard and I had to wait a long time for it to get back to room temperature. And even then I had a hard time getting nicely shaped cookies.

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The Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie & Chipwich Sandwiches

from America’s Test Kitchen

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking soda
14 Tbsp. unsalted butter
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
2 tsp. vanilla
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

1.  Pre-heat oven to 375°F.
2. Whisk together flour and baking soda in a medium sized bowl and set aside.
3. Heat 10 Tbsp. of butter in a 10-inch (don’t use a non-stick skillet if you have cast iron or something else available) over medium-high hear until melted, about two minutes. Continue cooking, swirling the pan constantly until butter is golden brown, 1-3 minutes.
4. Remove the skillet from heat and transfer the browned butter to a large, heat-proof bowl. Stir remaining 4 Tbsp. of butter into hot butter until melted.
5. Add both sugars, salt, and vanilla to bowl with butter and mix well. Add egg and additional yolk and whisk until mixture is smooth.
6. Stir in dry ingredients slowly until well mixed. Fold in chocolate chips.
7. Bake at 375°F for 10-14 minutes, rotating the pan halfway through. You want the edges to have begun to set but the centers to still be soft.
8. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
9. If you’re making chipwich sandwiches, make sure the cookies are completely cool before preparing. Let your ice cream sit out for a few minutes to soften, and then scoop the vanilla ice cream into the middle of one cookie. Gently press the second cookie down on top of the ice cream and slowly smush it down to spread the ice cream across the cookies. Garnish the sides with mini-chocolate chips if you wish!

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