Dark Chocolate and Sea Salt Cookies

These dark chocolate and sea salt cookies are like the sophisticated big sister of regular chocolate chip cookies. The dark chocolate gives them a rich, luxurious flavour and the sea salt throws you into a moreish 'sweet-salty-I need more' loop!

I don't have a single bad word to say about the traditional chocolate chip cookie, but these dark chocolate and sea salt cookies are absolutely next level.

I am a cookie-lover through and through, some of my all-time favourite cookie recipes include my Truffle Dough Cookies and my Chocolate Chip Shortbread cookies. But this recipe is always, always a winner.

Ingredients

• Flour - Use all-purpose flour (plain flour in the UK).

• White Sugar - Granulated sugar (caster sugar) helps the cookies to spread and have nice crispy edges.

• Light Brown Sugar - For a deeper, slightly caramel-y flavor.

• Eggs - Use large eggs in the US or medium eggs in the UK.

• Butter - Unsalted butter is best so we can control the salt level.

• Vanilla - A high-quality vanilla extract will round out the flavour and make a nice base for the dark chocolate and sea salt.

• Dark Chocolate - The star of the show. Use your favourite dark chocolate and chop it into chunks. If you don't have a favourite, any kind of dark chocolate or dark chocolate chips will be fine, but the higher the cocoa content percentage, the better. I used 70% cocoa dark chocolate for my cookies.

• Sea Salt - You want medium coarse sea salt for this, they should be big enough that they won't just dissolve into the cookie dough, but not so large that you're going to have to crunch them into pieces. We'll be putting sea salt both in the cookie dough and on top of the cookies when they are still warm out of the oven.

See recipe card for quantities.

How To Make Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Cookies

1. Beat the butter and both sugars together until pale and fluffy. This means the butter is noticeably lighter in colour and looks slightly aerated. I find this takes about 2 minutes with my stand mixer.
2. Add egg and vanilla and beat until combined.
3. Add the flour, baking soda and sea salt and mix until a smooth dough forms. It will be a relatively soft and sticky dough, but it shouldn't be runny like batter. If it is too soft, don't worry, it will stiffen up in the fridge.
4. Add chocolate chips. If you have premade chocolate chips or chunks, just throw them right in. If you are using a bar of chocolate, chop it into small chunks, about 1cm big. Be careful not to chop them too small or they will just melt away into the cookie dough as it bakes.
5. Chill the dough in the fridge for at least 1 hour. See section below on 'how long to chill cookie dough'.
6. When you are ready to bake, remove cookie dough from the fridge, preheat the oven to 350°F / 180°C and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
7. Make cookie dough balls and place them on the cookie sheet. An easy way to do this is with an ice cream scoop, but you can also use a large spoon and just roll the balls by hand. Do not press them down or flatten the cookie dough, the cookies naturally spread out as they bake - make sure you leave plenty of room between cookie balls to allow for spreading.
8. Bake for 12 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and sprinkle immediately with more sea salt. Allow to cool for 10 minutes before removing from the cookie sheet.

Variations

In my humble opinion, dark chocolate and sea salt are the ultimate combination for the perfect cookie. But should you want to make a variation of this, you can replace them with whatever mixins you are craving. Some examples:

• Butterscotch chips and sea salt - if you want to maintain the sweet and salty flavour but aren't a chocolate fan.

• Dark chocolate AND Milk Chocolate - maybe you want to dabble in dark chocolate but aren't ready to fully commit, put a mixture of dark and milk, or even white chocolate in your cookies to balance out the sweetness levels.

• Pecans, Walnuts or Pistachios - if you'd like to incorporate some crunch into your cookies, why not add some nuts? I think pecans, walnuts and pistachios all pair really nicely with this base recipe.

Want to take the base cookie recipe up a notch? Try my Browned Butter Chocolate Chip cookies!

Storage

Once the cookies are baked, store them in an airtight container at room temperature. Make sure they are completely cooled before putting them in the container or the temperature change will make them sweat and they will go soggy.

Don't keep them in the fridge, it's not necessary and will be detrimental to their texture.

They should remain fresh at room temperature for up to 5 days (but if they last that long before they are all eaten up, then I will be very surprised!)

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