Gideon's Bakery Copycat Giant Chocolate Chip Cookies from Buuck Farms Bakery

Gideon's Bakery Copycat Giant Chocolate Chip Cookies - made dough October 14, 2023 from Buuck Farms Bakery

1 cup butter, room temperature

3/4 cup (165 grams) dark brown sugar

1/4 cup (55 grams) granulated sugar

1 large egg

1 large egg yolk

2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste

1 cup (125 grams) all-purpose flour

1 1/4 cups (165 grams) bread flour

2 teaspoons cornstarch

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups mini semisweet chocolate chips, divided

1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips

4-ounce semisweet chocolate bar, chopped

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

flaky sea salt

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together the butter, brown sugar and granulated sugar for 5 minutes, scraping down the bottom and sides of the bowl to keep mixture even-textured.
2. Add egg, yolk, and vanilla bean paste and mix an additional 3 minutes.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together all-purpose flour, bread flour, cornstarch, baking powder. baking soda and salt. Add to butter mixture in 2-3 additions, mixing on low speed after each addition until combined. Do not overmix.
4. Fold in 1/2 cup milk chocolate chips, 1/2 cup mini semisweet chocolate chips and the chopped chocolate bar.
5. Portion dough into six 6.5-ounce cookies and roll into balls. Cover and refrigerate for 10 minutes.
6. In a separate bowl, mix the remaining 1 cup each of semisweet chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips and mini semisweet chocolate chips.
7. Roll each dough ball into the chocolate chip mixture. Press the chocolate chips into the dough so that they stick. Coat the entire dough balls except for the bottoms. Cover and refrigerate for 24 hours.
8. When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Bake 2 cookies per sheet, leaving plenty of room between cookies. Bake for 16-18 minutes or until edges are set. Remove the cookies from the oven and bang the baking sheet on the counter 4-5 times to flatten the cookies slightly. Use a small rubber spatula to gently press any runaway edges into a neater circle. Press extra chocolate chips into any bare spots and sprinkle the cookies with flaky sea salt if desired. Let rest on baking sheets for 15 minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.

This is the second of three copycat recipes for Gideon's Bakehouse cookies that I've tried from Buuck Farms Bakery. I'd actually made a Gideon's Bakehouse copycat recipe for chocolate chip cookies several years ago from a different source. 

But Buuck Farms Bakery seems to have more copycat recipes for Gideon's Bakehouse than other sources so I thought I'd try several of them as I was in a big-cookie baking mood. The funny thing is, back in 2019, I'd never heard of Gideon's Bakehouse and didn't know what it was. I had some vague notion it was a bakery "somewhere in Florida" and their appeal included covering the entire outside of a cookie with the add-ins, which, in this case, were chocolate chips. I hadn't realized it was a Disney bakery and highly popular with Disney aficionados and others. 

It appears to have a devoted following, much like Levain Bakery and other famous bakeries. I've never been to Gideon's Bakehouse so copycat recipes will have to do for me.

There's something really appealing about oversized chocolate chip cookies literally covered with three kinds of chocolate chips: semisweet, mini semisweet and milk chocolate chips. What's not to love?

Even if you cover the dough balls completely with chocolate chips, the cookies spread during baking so there will be gaps. No problem: once you take the cookies out of the oven, gently press more chips in the open cookie spaces. I didn't need a completely covered cookie but still covered a fair amount of the surface with chips.

I forgot about my double panning trick when I baked these so the bottom did get more brown than I preferred. These weren't dry-overbaked but they could've used less baking time. They were dense and, surprisingly, not as sweet as I expected. Maybe all those chocolate chips got in the way of the brown sugar flavor coming through. Or I prefer more cookie and fewer chips. I might like the concept of this cookie (overloaded with chips) more than the cookie reality. The other copycat I tried in 2019 was better to me, probably because I didn't load up with the chips as much.