2013 Cooking Club Week 47: Fleur de Sel cookies

Pigwidgeon

Sorry this is a bit early but I'm working all weekend and won't get another chance to post it up.

In my opinion one of life's greatest pleasures is a freshly baked cookie. These are my all time favourite cookies, they're simple to make and I think the salt and the chocolate go really well together. They're an egg-free cookie so if anyone ever needs to bake something egg free these are a great option. The dough also freezes really, really well, I usually make quite a big batch, divide the dough into logs then bake some and freeze some. If you do freeze them just take them out a while before they need to be baked so that you can cut slices from the logs easily. This recipe makes two decent sized logs, I got 15 cookies from the first one so depending on how big you cut them it should yield about 30 cookies, obviously though it can be scaled depending on how much you need/want to make



Ingredients:
- 300g dark chocolate chips
- 350g flour
- 60g good quality cocoa powder
- 10g bicarbonate of soda
- 300g butter
- 240g demerara sugar
- 100g caster sugar
- 10g vanilla essence
- 6g fleur de sel (any good quality sea salt will be fine)

Method:
1. Soften the butter and cream it along with the sugars and salt. A stand mixer with a paddle attachment is the best, as you can leave it do it's thing for a few minutes, but I used just a hand mixer today and they came out fine.
2. Sieve together the soda, cocoa powder and flour and add it in slowly to the butter mixture. Make sure you don't overmix it, mix until it has almost come together then add the chocolate chips and mix it the final bit.

3. When all the ingredients are combined divide the mixture into two and begin to shape it into two logs, it may take a bit of work, if the mix seems a little dry don't worry, it does come together, have a bit of patience and you should end up with nice log shapes.
4. When you have the logs rolled, wrap them in clingfilm or baking paper. If you're going to freeze any, now is the time to pop them in. If you want to use them soon, then leave it in the fridge for a while until the butter hardens up again and you can cut neat slices, I usually cut them about 2cm slices. Place them on a baking tray on paper. Then bake at 180C for 9-12 minutes, check them regularly after 9 minutes. Allow them cool slightly before removing them from the tray.



The cocoa powder I used wasn't the best quality so they normally come out quite a bit darker. I'd say the cookies would also work well with some nuts or maybe white chocolate chips added to the mixture, if you're doing this I would use maximum 300g of whatever you decide.

homemadecider

Well now. That answers the question of "what will I do on Sunday?"

Thanks OP - they look delicious. I love a good sweet & salty combo. I once made bacon and chocolate chip cookies, they were surprisingly good!

meoklmrk91

Going shopping tonight so will get the ingredients for these. Will prob end up making them as well tonight so will post pics and reactions tonight as well

MissFlitworth

I am absolutely making these for work next week (if they make it as far as work), are they a chewy or crispy cookie?

meoklmrk91

Made these tonight, I can confirm they are yummy, as can my friends who dug into them, chocolate chips are ridiculously expensive so I just bought some decent dark chocolate and put them through the food processor, 99c for a bar of 74% in Tesco not too bad.

They are easy to make and love the fact that I now have a second batch in the freezer for when I am feeling sinful. I must roll out the log more for the next batch because these ones are huge! Not that that's a bad thing. Will be making them again.

MissFlitworth my batch were chewy anyway, a little crunchy on the outside but over all chewy.

Here's a pic of my batch:



Thanks OP, great recipe. (We need more cookie recipes in the cooking club).

MissFlitworth

meoklmrk91 wrote: »

MissFlitworth my batch were chewy anyway, a little crunchy on the outside but over all chewy.

woohoo! the best kind of cookie!

Pigwidgeon

Glad they turned out well crunchy on the edges and chewy in the middle is the perfect way to describe them alright !

Larry Bee

meoklmrk91 wrote: »

MissFlitworth my batch were chewy anyway, a little crunchy on the outside but over all chewy.

As were mine: really really nice. When I mad them the seemed expand and expand - the tray I used was a bit small so I ended up with hexagonal shaped cookies but they were really lovely.

They took a bit longer than the 12 mins - 17-18 but I've a dodgy oven. I wasn't sure when to take them out so they may have been very slightly overdone. I'm not sure as they disappeared so quickly.

Also, when did you put the vanilla essence in?

Roesy

Agh, forgot to put in the vanilla essence. They are in the fridge it at the moment but can't wait to try them. Hope they turn out okay as I had a disaster of a day in the kitchen. My Kenwood hand blender caught fire and I sent a load of my creamed butter flying.

Pigwidgeon

They should be fine without the vanilla, it doesn't make a massive difference. I usually add it after I've creamed the butter and sugar.

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

Pigwidgeon

eVeNtInE wrote: »

I've got some orange flavoured dark chocolate. Don't know whether to take out the fleur de sel or not, any opinions?

The orange and salt might be a bit much, I've never made them with flavoured chocolate but you could even try and reduce down the amount of salt and see how it goes? Is it a very strong flavour off the chocolate?

eVeNtInE

This post has been deleted.

Pigwidgeon

eVeNtInE wrote: »

I decided to leave out the fleur de sel, but reading the recipe wrong, when you said cream the butter and sugar I thought "Oh, better heat it up so". Turned out a bit of a mess. I've got a big gloopy ball to put into the oven now, and I think I'll just put it in to see what happens honestly…

Ah I only just saw this, I'd say if you leave it in the fridge until the butter hardens up again and you can cut it then it would be grand.

Wurly

Just made these. Holy mother of god, they're amazing!!! We ate them while they were still like hot mousse out of the oven. haha. We couldn't wait. Now they're hard and gloriously chewy inside. And you can taste the salt in the cookie too. Fantastic recipe - thanks so much.;)

SarahBeep!

My dough didn't come together properly, very crumbley

Pigwidgeon

It is quite a dry dough, if you work it together with your hands it should come together.

SarahBeep!

I think a lot of it was to do with my ****e mixer! :P

dipdip

SarahBeep! wrote: »

I think a lot of it was to do with my ****e mixer! :P

I wouldn't be using one of those around food, seems unsanitary :pac:

meoklmrk91

SarahBeep! wrote: »

I think a lot of it was to do with my ****e mixer! :P

At least you have one, I mix everything by hand, it's just one of those things I keep forgetting to pick up, hoping someone might get me one as an Xmas pressie. Although in one way it helps, don feel so guilty about having a few extra servings after burning all those calories.

On another note I'm having a **** week, so the second batch of Fluer de Sel is coming out of the freezer!

homemadecider

dipdip wrote: »

I wouldn't be using one of those around food, seems unsanitary :pac:

Just spat out my tea laughing, thank you for that!

Malari

Didn't have fleur de sel so used maldon instead, but I don't know, they just seemed like I had overdone it on the salt. That didn't stop them being gobbled, mind you I left them in for about 12 minutes I think but I'd say I could take them out at 9 minutes the next time so they stay gooey on the inside when they cool. I do still have half the batch in the freezer so I can try that soon!

confusticated

Made these last night and had an accident with the salt, where the top came off it and about 300g of salt fell into the bowl. I was very intellingently just setting the scales to zero when adding each ingredient, so destroyed the whole thing in salt. Didn't have any more butter so poured out the sugar/salt combination and started again, putting in about 4g of salt to allow for some that was coating the butter...worked out pretty well but they're quite salty. My housemate said it kinda tastes like there's caramel in them because of the sweet and salt tastes together. Also had to just use table salt after all the good stuff mixed with sugar, so that might have something to do with the strength of the taste.

Have the second roll in the freezer, can't see it staying there very long though! Love the rolling them and cutting slices, makes it much easier to store and measure them out evenly.

toadfly

Just made these and they are amazing OP, thank you.

meoklmrk91

Made these again tonight, a firm favourite

confusticated

Made these again tonight and have half of the dough in the freezer. Just had one (or three) with a cup of tea, so good! (Also no salt incident this time)

Mr. CooL ICE

I made these for my work colleagues a month ago and a few said they were the best cookies they have ever had. And I agree. No other cookies, homemade recipe or otherwise, can touch these.

And the fact that the dough can be made in advance, stored and used when needed means they are also the most dangerous cookies ever.

Cooperspale

Truly great recipe, Thank You. Used kosher salt & came up a treat

toadfly

Made these again last week for a charity bake sale. Love them, great recipe, thanks Op. So handy to make them the day before and leave them in fridge ready to pop into the oven.

Neyite

These were lovely! And I love the fact that you can freeze half.

Dizzyblonde

I made the dough for these yesterday and cooked half last night. They're amazing!
They were literally attacked here and eaten with vanilla ice cream while still warm.
Thanks Pigwidgeon