Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Cookies come but once a year in our house. They’re oh-so-wrong, yet oh-so-right, in the sense that they’re worse for you than pretty much anything, but consequently also taste better. Of course, scarcity demands indulgence and my Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies are the culinary manifestation of such necessity.

Everyone has a favourite approach to cookies. Unlike biscuits – in the British sense – there isn’t a one size fits all approach to cookies. And perhaps that’s part of their appeal. You can, within reason, do anything you like with a cookie. Salt? No problem. Chocolate? The more the merrier. You can even design it into cute shapes with the right cookie cutter, which is available at annclarkcookiecutters.com.

Adding salt to ingredients like caramel and chocolate has been in vogue for a few years now. It’s strange, then, that this is the first recipe I’ve written/tried that uses the combination. But it isn’t hard to see why the saline addition is so popular.

The inclusion of those few extra crystals of high-quality salt add a dimension far beyond their worth. Drawing out an even more intense flavour – as you might expect – the salt helps to elevate these salted chocolate chunk cookies over their esteemed rivals.

You can easily make these cookies your own too. Perhaps try substituting half the chocolate for a similar quantity of walnuts. I know that would go down very well around these parts.

To be honest, cookies have never come easily to me. These are the best I’ve ever made. But if you’d like to try something a little different, my recipes for cardamom cookies and golden oat and raisin cookies are worth a try.

Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Makes 10-12

Ingredients:

• 120g caster sugar
• 100g light brown sugar
• 120g butter
• 1 egg
• ½ tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 175g plain flour
• 200g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
• a pinch of salt, plus extra for sprinkling

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 190C/170C(fan). In a large mixing bowl, cream together the butter and sugars.
2. Whisk the egg into the creamed ingredients, before folding through soda, plain flour, chocolate and salt.
3. Bring the ingredients together into a large ball. Lay a sheet of baking parchment on a tray and arrange the dough into 10-12 dollops, leaving several inches between each.
4. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes until golden brown. Set aside to cool before transferring to a cooling rack. Scatter with good-quality salt crystals and enjoy while still slightly warm.

Cost: Despite containing an exciting amount of chocolate, these chunky cookies aren’t adorned with enough expensive ingredients to set you back an eye-watering amount.

Naturally, the more expensive the chocolate you use, the dearer your cookies will be. Personally, I see little point in using irresponsibly priced chocolate in cookies; neither too cheap, nor too expensive.

Plump for something in between and you’ll have a fine batch of delicious, pain-numbingly good salted chocolate chunk cookies sitting in front of you for as little as £2.50.