Great British Baking Show Champ Edd Kimber's Secret Method For Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookies
Winning the first season of the "Great British Bake Off" gave baker Edd Kimber the opportunity to pursue his dream of a baking career. Since his win in 2010, Kimber has published four cookbooks, shares recipes and photography on his blog The Boy Who Bakes, and writes for multiple publications (via PopSugar.) But perhaps his greatest accomplishment, at least in the eyes of cookie lovers everywhere, is the creation of a perfect chocolate chip cookie.
Kimber embarked on a mission to find the best chocolate chip cookie out there, sharing his journey in a series of posts called "The Cookie Chronicles" on The Boy Who Bakes. He tested chocolate chip cookie recipes and methods from several sources, including the original Toll House cookie recipe, Bon Appétit, and noted foodies Alison Roman, Sarah Kieffer, and Tara O'Brady.
Kimber shared in his series his favorite methods from each of these recipes. One banging good technique that he really loves for the texture it gives to cookies is pan banging. The technique is about as simple as it sounds. In Kimber's recipe for "Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies", he pulls the pan of cookies from the oven halfway through baking — and smacks it on the counter. They go back in the oven, and get a few more whacks as they finish baking. The resulting cookies are thin, ridgy, chewy in the middle, and crisp at the edges. That's Kimber's definition of a perfect chocolate chip cookie.
Several cookie tricks came together to create this perfect cookie
"How To Cook Everything" author Mark Bittman notes on his website that, "Cooks who grow and mature seek other ways to cook dishes they already know." Edd Kimber is obviously a talented baker, based on his "GBBO" win and successes, but still recognizes there is always more to learn. This led to his "Cookie Chronicles" series, testing out popular chocolate chip cookie recipes and methods from other gifted bakers.
The pan banging technique, for example, is one that Kimber learned from Sarah Kieffer, cookbook author and writer behind The Vanilla Bean Blog. Kieffer found that banging pans of cookies periodically during baking creates concentric rings of ridges in the cookies that give a texture that's both fudge-y and crispy. Brooklyn-based author and former New York Times columnist Alison Roman inspired Kimber with her Salted Butter Chocolate Chunk Shortbread. After testing her recipe for his post on The Boy Who Bakes, Kimber included salted butter in his own cookie recipe. From Bon Appétit's reader-submitted recipe, Kimber discovered that browned butter gives chocolate chip cookies a deeper and distinctive favor. And from food writer and cookbook author Tara O'Brady, Kimber learned that melted butter makes it a cinch to quickly mix up a batch of cookie dough.
By bringing together the pan banging and other components of amazing chocolate chip cookie recipes, Kimber created his own "Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookie" that's decadent, memorable, and in his opinion, absolute perfection.