It’s my birthday this week, so cookies are back. It’s my party and I’ll gorge myself on browned butter if I want to.
It’s probably a symptom of having older siblings, but it’s hard to forget how old twenties always used to sound to me, how much I thought I’d have sorted by now. But then, I thought that at 18 and 21 too, so I suspect my heart and my brain will forever be playing catch up to the passing of timing and the aging of this bundle of cells. I also suspect we all feel the same way.
But these cookies are probably one of the most grown up things I’ve achieved so far. They’re dark and toffee-y and use fancy salt — when did I become a person who gets excited by fancy salt? — in ways that take them a million miles from Maryland’s excuse for cookies.
The making of them completely feels like magic — the process of browning the butter, then whisking it with sugar and leaving it for a bit means that you start out with a gritty mix but end up with a gorgeously thick, glossy mixture. And then! And then you add the flour and the chocolate and it becomes the most gorgeously rich, nutty cookie dough imaginable.
It’s not a cookie to hand out to children — it’s one to be served warm, and savoured, the crisp outside giving way to a soft chewy inside, studded with dark chocolate brought to life by smoked sea salt. It’s an indulgence that, dipped into coffee, makes grey Monday mornings at your office job a lot brighter. It’s most certainly a cookie for grown ups.
Dark chocolate chip cookies with smoked sea salt
Notes
- Allow the baking tray to cool between batches. Using a hot tray will melt the dough prematurely and give you overbaked edges. Ew.
- Don’t be tempted to make smaller cookies. Using the right amount is important to ensure you get the crunchy edges and chewy middle.
- Like all cookies, they’re best served warm. If preparing ahead of time, pop them into a warm oven for about 4 minutes before serving just to get that gooey, melty centre again (or microwave for around 20 seconds).
Adapted from the Cook’s Illustrated Baking Book
Yields 14-16 large cookies
Ingredients 250g plain flour |
Method
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Recently I’ve been seeing salted everything and often it just doesn’t work – salted chocolate orange-just no but cookies with salt yes, yes, yes. These look amazing, my morning coffee seems so unappealing now as I don’t have a lovely soft cookie to go with it!
These look like some seriously delicious cookies. Salt I’m totally on board with but I’ve never tried it smoked in cookies…sounds amazing!
Happy Birthday for this week! Sounds like a perfectly acceptable way to spend your birthday, in front of a cookie mountain.
FoodNerd x
http://www.foodnerd4life.com
Oh I know what you mean! Such an easy trend to get wrong, but straight up salty + sweet will always work, right?
You’re absolutely right- these would certainly put a very cheery, happy spin on a Monday morning coffee at the start of another long week at work. I haven’t made cookies for ages- they are now TOTALLY top of the to-bake list!
These cookies look delicious! Love the addition of smoked sea salt- very unique! 🙂
These look ungodly delicious. And happy birthday!
oops added 2 eggs rather than another yolk! Are the cookies ruined?
I’d imagine they were fine? How did they come out?
Looks delicious! Do you think adding melted dark chocolate to the butter mix before adding the flour would be fine? I just love my cookies with double dark chocolate!
Hi Meera! You’d probably be better off subbing some of the flour out for cocoa powder to get that double chocolate hit, to about 190g plain flour, 60g cocoa. Adding more actual chocolate would make them more like puddles of chocolate with the odd chunk of cookie dough!