I'm here with back-to-back cookie recipes to offer you! I knew this one from my lab cookbook would be good, because I'd been lucky enough to eat these cookies directly from Tash on a couple of occasions. They're the most luxurious chocolate chip cookies around: super-buttery and a touch crumbly, with chunks of the darkest chocolate and a sprinkling of fancy salt.
Really, I should have taken more of a cue from the name - they're pretty close to shortbread. That means lots of cold butter and no eggs, and usually no browning. I left the butter out to soften out of habit and allowed the cookies brown a little around the edges, and was very satisfied with the result. Tash recommended using a mixture of chocolates and I agree that it's worth the effort here, especially when it means the odd seam of barely-sweet > 80% cocoa chocolate.
The intended recipient of these cookies ended up cancelling our dinner plans. It was a pity, but Michael and I having the entire batch to ourselves was ample consolation.
Chocolate chip shortbread
(a recipe shared by Tash,
who credits it to Smitten Kitchen)
250g butter
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups plain flour
100g very dark chocolate (I used Lindt 85%)
70g other chocolate (I used Callebaut 54.5%)
fleur de sel
Preheat an oven to 180°C. Line 1-2 baking trays with paper.
Use an electric beater to cream together the butter, sugar and vanilla. Mix in the flour with a spoon until just combined.
Roughly chop the chocolate and fold it into the biscuit dough. Roll generous tablespoons of the mixture into balls and place them on the baking trays, flattening them slightly and leaving plenty of space between the biscuits. Sprinkle them lightly with fleur de sel.
Bake for 12-15 minutes; I let mine get a little golden around the edges. Give them 5 minutes to cool on the tray before carefully transferring them to a rack.
The dough can be refrigerated or frozen. Days-old cookies can be brought back to their gooey best with 12 seconds in the microwave.
these look delicious - there is something more extravagant about using chocolate chunks rather than choc chips
ReplyDeleteThanks, Johanna! I usually fall back on chips but really enjoyed the varied pieces here. :)
Delete