Chocolate Chunk Shortbread

The best of both worlds.

Sometimes you just want to eat a chocolate chip cookie and a shortbread together.

You get chocolate delivered in an incredibly buttery melt-in-your-mouth vehicle, complete with crispy edges from the demerara sugar coating. And a little bit of sea salt as a little flourish at the end.

This is, of course, the recipe from Alison Roman’s Dining In, which went massively popular on the Internet a couple of years ago. So I’m a little late to the game. But I definitely see where the hype came from – it’s a unique recipe which delivers more than its deceptively simple premise with a good balance between salty and sweet, crunchy and crumbly.

(Don’t mind the ugly cookie in the top left corner above it was from the end of the log, OK?)

The recipe can be found here, and you can also watch Alison Roman herself bake the cookie in this youtube video.

Incidentally I found it confusing how in the youtube video Alison Roman talks about how much she likes using the scale to weigh out everything, but continues to list all her recipe amounts in cups.

Ingredients (makes about 24 cookies)

• 2 1/4 sticks/255g cold salted butter, cut into cubes (alternatively you could replace with unsalted butter and add 3/4 tsp of salt but Alison Roman swears you get a deeper salt flavour with the salted butter so that’s what I stuck with)
• 1/2 cup/100g granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup/50g light brown sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 1/4 cups/281g all purpose flour
• 6 oz/170g bittersweet dark chocolate, chopped (but not too fine)
• 1 large egg, beaten, to coat the cookies at the end
• Demerara sugar, to coat the cookies at the end
• Flaky sea salt, to sprinkle on the cookies at the end

Method

1. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter, sugars, and vanilla on medium-high speed until light and super fluffy and it looks like frosting, about 3-5 mins (see notes if you don’t have a powerful enough mixer).
2. Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula and fold in the flour and chocolate chunks, just enough to blend.
3. Divide the dough into half, and place each piece onto a large piece of plastic wrap. Roll the dough into a log about 2″ in diameter, squeezing the dough tightly together, and wrap completely in plastic wrap. Chill until firm, at least 2 hours (I just leave mine in the fridge overnight – I always feel that cookies taste better after a long rest).
4. Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C. Line 2 sheet pans with baking paper.
5. Brush the outside of the logs with the beaten egg, and roll in demerara sugar.
6. Slice each log into 1/2 inch thick rounds (this might be easier if you use a sharp serrated knife), and place on the prepared sheet pans about 1 inch apart (they won’t spread much). Sprinkle each cookie with a bit of sea salt.
7. Bake in the preheated oven until the edges are beginning to brown, about 12-15 mins. The cookies themselves will not take on much colour.
8. Let cool slightly before eating, although the recipe claims that it tastes best at room temperature.
9. Store in an airtight container at room temperature once the cookies have completely cooled.

Notes

• If you don’t have a strong enough mixer to cream together sugar with cold butter (like me), just cream the sugar together with room temperature butter (but not too warm or it won’t cream lol). I don’t really buy her thing about creaming cold butter honestly.
• The cookie dough can be kept up to a week in the fridge, and up to a month in the freezer. Baked cookies can be stored in an airtight container for 5 days.
• When slicing the cookies, your cookie will probably crumble apart. Just squeeze any pieces that crumbled off back together. Thicker cookies will be more likely to retain their shape – the key is to just remain consistent so all the cookies bake at the same rate. Also the larger your chocolate chunks the more likely it is that your cookie will crumble as you cut through the chunk – but too small chocolate chunks don’t taste as good so kind of use your judgement.