Sometimes you want a cookie that's a little outside the box. Something you might get in a small neighbourhood cafe when you need a sweet little treat.
This cookie checks all the boxes
I once hosted a series of classes that helped people explore cookie making and how subtle changes in ingredients, temperatures, techniques and baking times could affect their baking and ultimately lead to fine-tuning their favourite recipes to dial in precisely the cookie they were after in their life. It was a lot of fun.
When I was writing the class, I knew I wanted to finish with an ultimate, gourmet-style chocolate chip cookie that would demonstrate how you could combine the different adjustments to create the cookie of your dreams. It made me think - what is the chocolate chip cookie of my dreams? I’ve spent so much time and so many years ticking everyone else’s boxes that I never considered what I would love most about a cookie if it were designed just for me.
So I did it - I made a list of all the things I wanted in a chocolate chip cookie and developed this recipe. Chunks of dark chocolate punctuated with pops of salt and a great vanilla flavour, a chewy texture with some crispness and a delightful little sugar crunch. These are cookies meant to appeal to grown-up taste buds. If I’m making cookies for kids, I use an entirely different recipe altogether.
This cookie will take a few ingredients you may not have on hand. It's a cookie you have to plan, and it takes a little more effort and time, but you’re worth it!
Why Brown Butter?
Melting a portion of butter is not unusual in a cookie recipe. It adds to the chewiness and creates a crisp exterior that yields a dense cookie inside. Going the extra step to brown the butter adds a nuttiness and richness I adore. I use brown butter and room-temperature butter in this recipe to create a good balance of butter flavour and chewiness and keep the cookies from greasiness.
Why all the different sugars?
Brown sugar provides caramel notes
White sugar provides crispness
Turbinado sugar does not dissolve entirely and adds a fun, crunchy texture surprise.
Salt makes flavours pop!
One thing you’ll notice with this cookie is that it has a distinct saltiness achieved by replacing the familiar table salt with kosher salt. It is an exaggerated result of a cooking and baking principle. The larger granules of kosher salt provide pockets of saltiness, whereas table salt provides one harmonious flavour.
Salt brings out and enhances the flavour of other ingredients. To make vanilla taste more vanilla and chocolate taste more chocolate, butter tastes more buttery with a complement of salt. You’ll notice if it’s missing because your baking and cookies will taste flat and lifeless - and if it’s overdone, you’ll taste saltiness over the other ingredient. But when you get it just right - heaven! Everything tastes wonderful together. That’s what we want.
Don’t skip the salt, but control it in your recipes, particularly in baking, using unsalted base ingredients - butter in particular.
Pay attention to your baking recipes. If unsalted butter is called for and you only have salted, reduce the addition of salt. The opposite is true; if a recipe calls for salted butter and you only have unsalted - increase the addition of salt by a pinch. It’s a little difference that makes a big difference.
Choose your chocolate and chop it
You could use whatever chocolate you like in this recipe. I prefer dark chocolate and think it plays really well with the nuttiness of brown butter and balances well with those pops of salt and sugar. The secret around the chocolate in this recipe is chopping it rather than using formed chocolate chips.
Chopping provides chunks that create pockets of chocolate in the cookie, but the chards and dust produced in chopping meld into the dough and give the cookie part a chocolaty hit of flavour all on its own.
The rest is necessary
After all the beating and mixing, a little rest for the cookie dough is needed. The recipe calls for 30 minutes, which is a minimum amount of time. The flour needs time to hydrate thoroughly to give the cookie structure. These cookies spread well, producing a thin, chewy cookie with a crisp outer shell.
If you bake too soon, the cookies are entirely too flat.
If, on the other hand, you want a taller cookie that doesn’t spread quite as much, refrigerate the dough for a few hours or even overnight. Scoop and bake the cookies while the dough is chilled. They will spread less in the oven and be a little thicker overall.
Can I let you in on a secret?
Everyone likes cookies straight out of the oven, but in this cookie baker's opinion, they taste better and have a much better texture the following day.
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