Sea Salt Chocolate Puddle Cookies

One of my clearest memories from when I was a toddler was that my mom kept a box of leaf shaped chocolates on the top of the tallest cabinet in our apartment. Then at the end of the day if I was a good child that day, she would let me have one leaf chocolate and then put the rest of the chocolates back on the cabinet. I would consciously be on very good behavior throughout the day, because then I would get a chocolate leaf at night. And you can bet I ate that chocolate leaf super slow!

When I started elementary school, the chocolate chip cookie became my new chocolate leaf after I tried a chocolate chip cookie for the first time and immediately loved it. Even when I outgrew getting chocolate rewards from my mom, the chocolate chip cookie stayed my personal reward. At the end of a particularly long week I still eat a chocolate cookie on Friday afternoon.

The more chocolate chip cookies I tried, the more details I started noticing about them. For starters, the ones from bakeries usually had salt on them. My favorite ones had “chocolate puddles” where a big piece of chocolate melted into the cookie. For a while I tried to recreate this with chopped chocolate instead of chocolate chips, but they still looked kind of blocky even after baking. After searching for sites with the chocolate puddles, I realized that the secret to creating the puddle is to use chopped chocolate and then take the cookies out partway through baking and bang the cookie sheet on a counter to make the already soft chocolate flatten to look like a puddle.

These cookies are a prettier, newer iteration of my favorite cookie of all time. Chocolate chip cookies are timeless, and I find them delicious through the many versions of chocolate chip cookies I have tried. 

These cookies are dairy-free so the Spork can enjoy them too. For other dairy-free chocolate chip cookies see chewy vegan chocolate chip cookies, and nutty sea salt chocolate chunk cookies

This recipe was adapted from butter and brioche’s classic chocolate chip cookie recipe, particularly the chocolate puddle part.

Sea Salt Chocolate Puddle Cookie

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Ingredients

  

• 355 g all purpose flour
• 1.5 teaspoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup unsalted Earth Balance vegan margarine (2 sticks)
• 175 g granulated sugar
• 125 g light brown sugar
• 2 medium eggs room temperature
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 200 g dark chocolate roughly chopped
• pyramid salt for sprinkling

Instructions

 

• Mix flour, baking soda, salt, baking powder and set aside.
• With a hand or stand mixer, beat the butter until fluffy about 2 minutes.
• Add the sugars and continue beating until integrated and fluffy , about 3 additional minutes. Then add the dry mixture in two portions, beating each time on medium.
• Cover dough with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge overnight. You can chill for as low as 30 m but I find the longer you chill the better it holds shape later on (less spread, less flat of a cookie).
• Preheat oven to 350 C.
• Line baking sheet w/ parchment paper, and use a 1.5 tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop cookie onto the sheet. Leave at least 2 inches in between each cookie to account for spread.
• Bake for 10 minutes, open the pot and waring a thick glove, bang the cookie sheet against the rack to help the chocolate spread out into a puddle shape.
• Bake another 12 minutes. Take out and let cool on baking pan additional 5 minutes. Meanwhile crush pyramid salt in between your fingers and sprinkle on the cookies.
• Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely, serve when still a little warm!

Notes

Instead of baking all cookies at once, I like to only bake what I plan to eat the same day. With the remainder, I make the 1.5 tablespoon scoops of cookie dough ball and then freeze them by first plating the balls on a cookie sheet lined with parchment and later transferring all frozen balls to a zip-loc (freezing the balls individually first prevents the balls from sticking together). These cookies stay good for one month in the freezer, and you can follow the same baking times in the recipe when you take them out of the freezer (10 min, then 2 min, then let cool on pan 5 min, on rack for rest).

For vegan dark chocolate, chuao makes vegan dark chocolate blocks. Enjoy Life makes dark chocolate chips which can be melted down and poured into a rectangular bowl lined with parchment to create a block. Using a block and chopping it up will create more puddle like shapes than using chips.

In other news, I recently visited my grandparents while I was in China for a wedding. They have been married 60 years and to this day still walk hand in hand and do everything together. Their love reminds me of everything warm and fuzzy in the world. Below are my favorite photos that I took of them this summer 🙂