In chocolate chip cookie recipe battle between Nestle and Crisco, winner depends on your preference
It’s difficult to find a more widely known food package recipe than that of the Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Sure, Crisco’s pie crust is a permanent fixture on the shortening manufacturer’s cans, but if you buy packages of the sticks, there’s also a recipe promising the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Let’s see if we can stir up some corporate warfare by pitting these two recipes against each other.
That’s right, it’s a No Budget Cooking Series first. Two recipes. One week. No regrets. Until the next time I step on the scale.
Looks aren’t everything
A No Budget Cooking Series tenet is to focus on taste over appearance. Making food that’s tasty, not a Pinterest fail waiting to happen. That’s why I don’t put much stock in how a dish looks. But we’re already breaking rules this week so let’s get nuts.
Visually, Crisco produces a pleasing profile of crags and mounds surrounding the chocolate chips and maintains good height. These cookies provide a toothsome, satisfying bite. As far as texture goes.
However, when it comes to taste, the Nestle recipe gets a flavor boost from butter that shortening can’t match. Still, the butter works in a supporting flavor role to the sugary chocolate flavor that exceeds cookies made with regular Crisco. In hindsight, perhaps I should have used the butter-flavored shortening.
There’s more to the flavor disparity. Nestle’s uses about the same amount of flour as Crisco, but mixes in an extra quarter-cup sugar and double the chocolate chips.
Crisco’s parent company, J.M. Smucker, doesn’t have a controlling interest in any chocolate chip making brands — I’m amused by parent companies of these brands sneaking product placement into the ingredient lists, like Pillsbury flour in this Crisco recipe, as if we don’t know what they’re doing — so I used Nestle Toll House chocolate chips for both recipes.
Crisco’s dough can also satisfy both chewy and crispy cookie fans. Just adjust the bake time. Cookies baked following Nestle’s recipe get crispier around the edges with longer bake times but the difference between chewy and crispy isn’t as pronounced as with the Crisco version.
The first batch of Nestle dough, baked for 9 minutes, turned into chocolate chip cookie pancakes. Subsequent batches with longer bake times gained a little more volume, especially those formed with a melon ball scoop.
I got 24 cookies from the Crisco recipe and 42 cookies from the Nestle recipe. Both fell short of the promised 3 and 5 dozen cookies, respectively.
Buying the Crisco sticks makes measuring much easier. Cut and dump into the bowl without the need to scrape shortening out of a measuring cup.
Crisco’s online version of the recipe notes that, if omitting the nuts, add an additional half-cup of chocolate chips. That would likely shrink the flavor gap between Crisco and Nestle.
Also, I’m curious what percentage of home bakers add nuts to their chocolate chip cookies.
There’s no shortage of advice on how to bake chocolate chip cookies to your liking. Use baking powder in place of baking soda for more lift or chill dough with butter before baking to reduce spread. Allowing the dough to chill 24 hours before baking boosts flavor. Of course, that assumes you don’t live with raw cookie dough fiends who will clean out the bowl long before the oven reaches 375 degrees.