American Chocolate Chip Cookies in Germany

After a couple trial recipes and reading expat blogs, I found a way to make really tasty, just-like-home chocolate chip cookies. We may not be able to make tacos the same way in Germany, but we can at least have our chocolate chip cookie fix!

But before the cookies, a quick detour into general differences between baking in America and Germany. (I won't judge if you just skip to the cookies.)

So it turns out that flour in the US does not necessarily equal flour in Germany. Who would've thunk it? There's actually a really wonderful variety of flour here--even at the discount grocery stores, you can get pastry flour, whole wheat flour, and spelt flour. At the regular grocery stores, you can get 2 types of wheat flour plus rye and spelt flours, often at 2 or more levels of 'fineness.' (Fineness is in quotes because 2 types of flour may look and feel the same, but bake veeery differently due to the different mineral content. Yeah, it's weird, but read on if you want an explanation!) At home I never tried baking with anything except all purpose flour, bread flour, and whole wheat flour, so I'm pretty excited to try the spelt and rye flours.

Here's the deal:

• Weizenmehl 405 = pastry flour, most common flour at the grocery store
• Weizenmehl 550 = all purpose flour
• Weizen-Vollkornmehl = whole wheat flour
• Dinkel Mehl = spelt flour
• Roggenmehl = rye flour

There's a great article on German vs. American flours here, which I found really useful when I first started trying to understand the baking aisle im Supermarkt. It explains the difference between 405 and 550, which has to do with the mineral or ash content of the flour that I alluded to earlier in this post. I have also enjoyed reading other expats' (often similar, usually funny) reactions to the baking aisle in Germany.

One more thing: Germans generally don't bake with baking soda and it turns out that their baking powder (Backpulver) isn't exactly equivalent to ours. Bah! This makes translating recipes complicated. Oh, and the grocery stores don't sell vanilla extract -- they sell little packets of vanilla sugar. Fortunately, Vanillin-Zucker has substituted just fine into all the recipes I've tried so far, and if worse comes to worst I can always make my own vanilla extract.

everything you need (except butter, salt, and nuts) to make the cookies

American Chocolate Chip Cookies in Germany
225 grams or 1¾ cups all purpose flour or Weizenmehl 550*
1 TL or 1¼ teaspoons baking powder (Backpulver)
½ TL or teaspoon or salt 
140 grams or 10 tablespoons butter, softened but not melted
37.5 grams or ½ + ⅛ cup granulated sugar (Raffinade-Zucker, Feine Kornung)

75 grams or ¾ cup soft, moist, fine-grained brown sugar**
1 egg
1 TL or teaspoon vanilla extract or Vanillin-Zucker
~200 grams or 7 oz coarsely chopped semisweet chocolate, ≥50% Kakao***
(optional) ~100 grams or ~½ cup chopped nuts (walnuts, pecans, or hazelnuts)

1. Mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a small bowl. Set aside.
2. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and 2 sugars until creamy and fluffy. Add the egg and beat until fully encorporated.
3. Gradually add (1) to (2), mixing with a wooden spoon until fully incorporated. Mix in the chocolate chunks and nuts.
4. Cover and refrigerate for ~24 hours. Form dough into balls about 2"-2.5" or 5-6cm in size (about the size of an apricot). Place dough balls about 5cm apart on a baking sheet.
5. Bake at 175°C or 250°F for 14-16 minutes, til the edges are light golden-brown. Err on the side of underbaking. Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for ~5 minutes, then finish cooling on a wire rack or plate. Makes 15-17 cookies.

* Do not use Weizenmehl 405 (pastry flour) or you will have small cakes, not cookies!
** Soft, fine-grain brown sugar is available at Asian markets in Germany. You can find large grain raw 'brown' sugar in all grocery stores, but this isn't the right stuff. It's okay to substitute granulated sugar, but the cookies may not be as moist and chewy.
*** I buy two 50 cent bars of Zartbitter Schokolade at a discount supermarket (Netto), then break it up with a fork. I have found that using a fork instead of a knife results in fewer little slivers and nicer chunks. Needless to say, grocery stores don't sell chocolate chips!

And that's it! The hardest part is waiting while the dough chills in the fridge, but after extensive taste tests we have confirmed that chilling the dough really does improve the flavor of the cookies. This was rather hard work--you're welcome :D