(^That right there, folks, is the longest recipe title known to humankind.)
Everyone has an opinion on what makes for the best chocolate chip cookie. Be it chewiness, sweetness, saltiness, thickness, thinness, just out of the oven or next-day. I believe every human has the inalienable right to personal cookie preferences, so I won’t claim a universally accepted premiere chocolate chip cookie quality. However, I will tell you what I think makes the best chocolate chip cookie: a balanced ratio of sugar to salt. A cookie without salt is simply uninteresting to me.
Because of this, I have a predisposition to not only love Alison’s shortbread chocolate chunk cookie, but to echo her question: why would I make another kind again? (My answer is: I’d make a different kind if I find myself craving a more layered, soft, but dense version of said cookie. But the shortbread will scratch the itch 9/10 times.)
These cookies take some planning, requiring at least 2 hours of chill time in the fridge. The dough assembly, if you have a stand mixer to do the heavy-lifting, is easy. It starts with beating two and a quarter stick of butter with sugar until light and fluffy. Then slowly adding the flour and salt (if you use unsalted butter) and chocolate chunks (I chopped mine from some Whole Foods branded dark chocolate bars) until they’re all combined. I divided the dough onto two sheets of plastic wrap, and rolled them into logs that are 2.25 inches thick. Oftentimes, I wing this sort of thing. But when it comes to thinly sliced cookie dough, the last thing you want is for them to fall apart. It felt important to be exact in the circumference measurements for this reason.
I prepared my dough on a Saturday afternoon, just before leaving for a party called The Great Midwestern Cornhole Tournament. And yes, it was exactly like it sounds. Great, full of midwestern experiences like college football, beer, and friendly people, and there was a verifiable cornhole tournament. Jordan and I placed 8th out of 16 teams, for those wondering. We’ll take it.
On Sunday I was ready to bake. I took out one log at a time -- painting it with egg and rolling it in Turbinado sugar, then slicing it into rounds and topping the cookies with flaky sea salt. The baking time averaged to 16 minutes for me.
I’ve had plenty of shortbread cookies in the past, but what makes these stand out is the crunchy sugar on the edges. I brought the cookies to work on Monday, and by 2pm, they were all gone. The most frequent comment I heard, besides “those cookies were amazing,” was “the sugar on the edges - oh my!”
145 recipes cooked, 80 to go.
