Bittersweet Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt

bittersweet chocolate chip cookies with sea salt

These cookies were inspired by the Bittersweet Chocolate Chip Cookie with Grey Salt I had at Delancey this summer (it was INCREDIBLE).

This recipe makes by far the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever baked; crisp, chewy edges with a soft gooey centre, and the flavours are like no other chocolate chip cookie I’ve tasted before – they’re 10x better!

I was always like “yeah, chocolate chip cookies, they’re good, but I’d probably rather have an oatmeal raisin cookie to be honest”, but these have changed me.

I can actually say that I love these chocolate chip cookies probably as much as cinnamon… ohohoho did I just go there? Yes, I went to there.

Notes:

The dough isn’t creamy and it’s not very soft, it’s quite dense and can be crumbly.

Make sure you scoop the dough at the 1/4 cup size as stated in the recipe – the size of the dough ball contributes tonnes to the final texture of the cookie, so don’t change it!!!!

It’s also important that the cookie dough is baked straight from the fridge- it needs to be cold and rock hard when it goes into the oven.

Bittersweet Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt

inspired by Delancey, and Maury Rubin of City Bakery
4.75 from 8 votes
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Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 12 minutes
Rest: 1 hour

Ingredients

  • 10 tbsp (5 oz / 140 g) butter
  • 1 tbsp vanilla extract
  • 1 3/4 cup (230 g) all purpose flour (I used half whole wheat and half all purpose)
  • 3/4 tsp baking powder
  • 3/4 tsp baking soda
  • 1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
  • 1/2 cup + 3 tbsp , (140 g) light brown sugar, packed
  • 1/2 tsp kosher salt / fleur de sel* , (plus more for sprinkling)
  • 1 egg
  • 7 oz (200 g) bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped (I LOVE 70% – it’s hard to find 60% in the UK, but you can use that or semi-sweet)

Instructions

  • In a small saucepan, melt the butter. Continue to heat it on medium-low on the stove until it foams up and smells nutty then stir in the vanilla extract. Leave to cool for 10 minutes.
  • Meanwhile, either in a stand mixer or a large bowl combine the next 6 ingredients (flour through to salt). Pour in the butter and mix until it looks like moist clumpy sand with no floury patches. Add the egg and mix in for a few seconds, then the chopped chocolate and mix until well distributed – but not for too long!
  • Using a 1/4 cup cookie scoop**, scoop up some of the dough and smoosh it into the scoop until it’s just full. Turn out onto a lined cookie tray, spacing each mound 3″ apart (I managed 4 per tray). Repeat with all of the cookie dough. Cover with cling film and refrigerate for anywhere between 1 – 72 hours (the longer you wait, the better the texture and flavour!!!).
  • When ready to bake preheat your oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). When ready, sprinkle the cold cookie dough with fleur de sel and shove into the oven immediately!! Bake for 8-11 minutes, until browned, with set edges, and a puffy, soft center. Let cool on the baking tray for a minute before transferring to a wire rack.
  • *You can sub the fancy salt for a scant 1/2 tsp of table salt in the dough, however you can’t use table salt for sprinkling so either use the fancy salt for sprinkling or just don’t sprinkle at all.
  • ** You can just use a 1/4 cup measure (which equals 4 tbsp), then roll the dough into a ball with your hands and slightly flatten into a hemi-sphere on the baking tray.
Tried this recipe?Let me know how it went! Mention @izyhossack or tag #topwithcinnamon!

74 thoughts on “Bittersweet Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt”

  1. Just found you via Tasteologie (I really need to get out more)! These cookies look A-mazing…love, love, love chocolate chip cookies, especially when dark chocolate is involved. Gorgeous photos!!

  2. Oh wow these look delicious, I love cookies with dark chocolate, it’s like a little surprise when you bite in and you get the sweet cookie and bitter chocolate. Blissful combination!

    • Noooooo, self-raising flour contains a ridiculously large amount of baking powder in proportion to flour- i think it’s something like 1 tbsp (3 tsp) of baking powder per cup of flour!!!! That’s fine for cakes, but when it comes to cookies, that would spell disaster! The precision with amounts and types of raising agents are really important for cookies 🙂 sorry, I went a bit food-science-nerdy on you then x

  3. Your new look is awesome! I especially love the cinnamon scrolls – super cute. You’re so talented, not just at baking but at blog design 🙂 I’d love to redo my site but no idea where to start!

    • haha, I’m not sure I can answer that because the cookies were all gone after two days!! I guess if you store them in an airtight container, they should keep their awesome texture for just under a week (I prefer to reheat them for a few minutes in a warm oven btw, it melts the chocolate and makes them extra gooey) 🙂

  4. Cute new website! Cinnamon stick search is super fun too. I will try the cookies- I liked Delanceys dessert the one time I went there. I had a deconstructed cannelloni with some kind of orange cream and it was delicious.

  5. Hi Izy!
    Thank you for this wonderful recipe! As much as I ADORE cooking, I hate baking. but maybe i’ll try this… 🙂
    thanks!

  6. Hi Izy
    Being first timer landed here….you got that AWESOME cookies….i love bittersweet choc…..no doubt i’m gonna try this recipe….so now i know what to do with my 3 kg Valrhona 70%…

    I gonna come again to check on your other recipe…. 🙂

    TQ

  7. These cookies look so amazing! And so huge! Would love to try this except I am very impatient and usually don’t wait for cookie dough to harden in the fridge! And then I ended up with very flat cookies!

  8. These cookies look amazing! This is my first time here, and I must say your site is very cute- you did an awesome job! Also, your photos are beautiful! You are very talented and hard to believe you are only 16! Keep up the great work!

  9. These cookies are in the fridge as we speak! I measured out exactly 1/3 cup and only got 8 cookies. Hope that’s ok! Can’t wait to see how they turn out!

  10. Hi,
    I just saw your gorgeous photo on Gourmet Live’s website. I love love your recipe and photos. Thanks for sharing!

  11. These cookies look incredible, can’t wait to bake a batch. Your site is gorgeous, love your photos. Very happy to have come across it via foodgawker 🙂

  12. This is by far the best cookie dough recipe I have EVER used. I’ve done chocolate chip cookies, toffee cookies, snickerdoodles, plain sugar cookies, chocolate cookies, you name it. But one question… how well does this dough freeze? Have you tried it? I have been making these so frequently and it would be so much easier if I could make a giant batch and freeze it!

    • Yay! I’m glad you like it so much! It is my absolute favourite cookie dough 😀 Yup it freezes well, what I do is ‘age’ the dough balls for 3 days, then freeze them for like an hour on a cookie sheet so they won’t stick together, then you can just chuck them into a ziplock bag and put it back into the freezer. I defrost the dough balls on a lined cookie tray for 1-2 hours at room temp, and then bake like normal – I haven’t tried baking straight from frozen because I cba to figure out the right baking time haha. Thank you, you made my day 😉

  13. Stumbled upon this recipe and your site and first time out, I had two separate amateur bakers rave over them as the best they’ve ever had and demand the recipe. I sent them the link. Kudos to you!

    This is the best kind of recipe, what I call “stupid simple” – if you just follow the directions you end up with an unbelievable result! I’ll be exploring your site for more!

  14. Hi

    I was wondering if I could leave the dough in the bowl and refrigerate if for up to 72 hours and then scoop the dough onto the cookie sheets, I don’t have room to keep sheet pans in my refrigerator.

    • You can do that, but it is quite a lot harder to scoop the dough once it’s been refrigerated. I’d say scoop it into balls and put them all back into the bowl, it’ll be easier to separate out the dough balls after the 72 hours than trying to scoop and shape the cold dough.

  15. These are amazing. I’ve been trying to figure out how a local Cleveland-area bakery manages to make their artisinal chocolate chip sea salt cookies both gooey inside and crunchy on the outside, and I believe this recipe has cracked the code, with just a few modifications. I added an additional egg and froze the dough for 36 hours, then baked the cookies at 350 degrees straight from the freezer. These are by far the best chocolate chip cookie I’ve ever made. Thanks for sharing!

  16. Happy New Year! Just found your site today, and loved this recipe. Just made some, but my dough was kinda soupy going into the fridge. Wondering what I may have done wrong. The cookies came out flat. Tasty, but flat. Amy ideas where I may have gone wrong?

    You have a great site. – the look and photos are fantastic. Thank you for putting in so much time into your posts!

    • Thanks! You too 🙂
      Hmm, that’s very strange! I’ve made them quite a few times, and the only thing I’ve ever found is that the dough can be slightly dry occasionally! It could literally just be a slight mis-measurement :/ not sure :/ If you compare my recipe to other chocolate chip cookie recipes, there is actually way less moisture in my dough than others because of the ratio of dry ingredients (flour and sugar) to wet (the butter and egg). Sorry they didn’t turn out right!

      • OK – Figured it out. WAAAAAY too much butter. went with 10 ounces, not tablespoons. Wow. That’s a pretty big mistake – very tasty mistake, but big mistake nonetheless. :0)

  17. Hi there! Trying this recipe as we speak. Do I have to flatten them out really flat before putting them into the oven? I flattened it in a bit but my first batch came out really puffy compared to your pictures.

    • I leave mine rounded (the dough is too hard to flatten normally anyway!), and sometimes they flatten and sometimes they stay more rounded (I don’t really know why, it’s weird). If you want to, flatten them slightly with your hand before baking them, but I wouldn’t flatten them loads because then they won’t be all gooey and awesome in the middle!

  18. Hi,
    I was wondering if you could use plain flour as a substitute for all purpose flour? by the way this is the first time I have come on your website and it is beyond fantastic, you are so talented!

  19. I am wondering if you think the cookies would turn out if I used 5 oz butter and 5 oz greek yogurt to cut down on the insane amount of calories. They look delicious but I can’t bring myself to bake cookies with 2 1/2 sticks of butter in them! 🙂

    • Haha love, you need to re read the recipe! There’s only 5 oz of butter in the recipe (which is considerably low in chocolate chip cookie terms). Also deffo do NOT EVER put Greek yogurt into cookies, it makes them cakey (ewwww) and these are meant to be crisp and gooey!!!!

  20. I made the recipe exactly as you wrote it, with the 10 tbsp butter and the dough was too powdery to make into balls and the cookies were very crumbly. I’m not sure what happened.

  21. The cookies look so good I have to make them! Your photos always look so good I never can get the lighting to look good in mine.

  22. Just discovered your blog. It’s amazing!

    This is the very first recipe I tried on your blog (and at this point, the only one. More will definitely be tried!).

    I refrigerated the dough overnight and they are so good. Best cookies ever! The salt on top just brings them over the top! Crispy on the edges and so soft and ooey-gooey on the inside…. Umm, yes please.

    Thanks for an awesome recipe! I’m going to make another batch soon. Hehe 😉
    -Grace 🙂

  23. Best chocolate chip cookies ever!!!!! I’ll never make them differently from now on. They looked undercooked after 10 min, so I left them for another 2min and they were perfect. It can differ from each oven, so everybody should figure it out themself. Also, I made them smaller and they were still perfect, because the first time I made them by the recipe they were too big for my taste. 🙂

  24. Hey sweet, do you know if i dont put it in the refrigerator (i mean, make the dough and then put it on the oven), will i still get the same (or almost) results? im really anxious to make these cookies! hehe

  25. um, WOW. i made these. their texture is phenomenal. crisp edges, perfectly cooked middles – not raw, but exactly done and still gooey. you have done it.

  26. These cookies are amazing! I have made them twice and they were a huge success. Best chocolate chip cookies ever!

  27. Izzy! I’ve just made them and they’re just so awesome! I love them! Thanks for the amazing recipe! 🙂
    Love your blog!
    Much love, xxx Virginie

  28. Hi Izy! I absolutely adore your website. I’m an avid follower of your blog from India. It is the first time I’ve tried this particular recipe and I’m afraid Im not too thrilled with the outcome. The batter was crumbly, and the cookies didn’t spread much while baking. What could have gone wrong?
    FYI, I used ‘Atta’ for this recipe, which is essentially the Indian form of whole wheat flour. I’ve spent hours on the internet trying to differentiate between the two, but to no avail. Your take on this would be greatly appreciated, This recipe looks like a keeper.
    Thanks!

  29. 5 stars
    I made this today. I liked it. However, the taste of baking soda and baking powder is. a bit strong. Can I reduce the amount of baking soda or powder?

  30. 5 stars
    I have never reviewed a recipe before but these cookies were next level so had to! Thanks so much, my American other half could not believe an Aussie girl could perfect a cookie. Seriously next level and not that hard if you follow your recipe to a t ! Thank you !!

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