When I heard Hilton released the recipe for its DoubleTree signature cookie, I was excited to try it. You know the cookies I’m talking about - the warm bit of deliciousness you get at a DoubleTree upon arrival? I’m a Hilton loyalist and I’ve stayed at DoubleTrees before (the last experience was a total disaster though). With travel still mostly in flux, I continue to be of the mind “might as well travel through food”. So I gave the recipe a whirl and here's what I thought!
I’ll get right to it...
I’m a huge cookie fan. I’ll take cookies over just about any other dessert (Except for ice cream. I mean, let’s be honest. Ice cream is nirvana, right? Back to cookies...).
They were good, delicious even, but in the end, meh, they were just chocolate chip cookies. I don’t know what I was expecting, but I didn’t find anything remarkable over traditional Toll House cookies. I didn’t do a side by side comparison - although how awesome would that be?
On the downside, they took a lot of ingredients. Lots of chocolate chips (more than a bag! Not necessarily a negative, but...), walnuts, rolled oats, cinnamon and...lemon juice! Even though ingredients are now becoming more available, who needs to pile on a bunch of seemingly unnecessary ingredients? That said, the extra ingredients certainly didn’t take away from the flavor, but I doubt that not including lemon juice would have killed the recipe.
On the plus side, while the recipe indicated that the entire batch yielded 26 cookies, I made a half batch and that yielded 24. Clearly I made my cookies smaller. I froze the other half of the dough to make later.
Another plus was that, even though it took a lot of chocolate chips, I liked the dough to chip proportion. I ran out of regular chocolate chip morsels, so I used a combo of regular and mini chips. Mini chips are usually what I put in chocolate chip cookies. I like having little bits of chocolate through the cookie. Moving forward, I may just keep using a mix of regular and mini chips.
The other biggie was that the recipe called for cinnamon. For me, cinnamon anything is a win (cinnamon ice cream anyone?). The flavor was not obvious, but I think I might add cinnamon to my chocolate chip cookie recipe from now on.
Was my apathy just me?
I polled my in house cookie expert (aka, Hubby) who never met a cookie he didn’t like. While he really enjoyed the DoubleTree cookies, they didn’t bowl him over either.
Are they cookie repertoire worthy?
The DoubleTree cookie recipe was definitely tasty, but I’m not sure it’s worth adding to my cookie repertoire. In part, they just didn’t hit a level of deliciousness to make the list. But mostly because sometimes, the experiences you have on vacation, should stay on vacation. And that extends to the anticipation of getting a yummy, warm chocolate chip cookie upon arrival at the hotel.
Don’t take my word for it - let me know what you think! Here’s the recipe and also the link!
DoubleTree Signature Cookie Recipe
Makes 26 cookies
½ pound butter, softened (2 sticks)
¾ cup + 1 tablespoon granulated sugar
¾ cup packed light brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 ¼ teaspoons vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
2 ¼ cups flour
1/2 cup rolled oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
Pinch cinnamon
2 2/3 cups Nestle Tollhouse semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 3/4 cups chopped walnuts
Cream butter, sugar and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer on medium speed for about 2 minutes.
Add eggs, vanilla and lemon juice, blending with mixer on low speed for 30 seconds, then medium speed for about 2 minutes, or until light and fluffy, scraping down bowl.
With mixer on low speed, add flour, oats, baking soda, salt and cinnamon, blending for about 45 seconds. Don’t overmix.
Remove bowl from mixer and stir in chocolate chips and walnuts.
Portion dough with a scoop (about 3 tablespoons) onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper about 2 inches apart.
Preheat oven to 300°F. Bake for 20 to 23 minutes, or until edges are golden brown and center is still soft.
Remove from oven and cool on baking sheet for about 1 hour.
Cook’s note: You can freeze the unbaked cookies, and there’s no need to thaw. Preheat oven to 300°F and place frozen cookies on parchment paper-lined baking sheet about 2 inches apart. Bake until edges are golden brown and center is still soft.
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