Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies
Are you unsatisfied with your current cookie recipe? Do you feel the chocolate to flour ratio is not high enough? Well look no further, these cookies will solve your problems! They are loaded with delicious dark chocolate and border on the consistency of truffles before you bake them. When they come out of the oven they have a thin outer shell that provides a nice contrast to the soft and chewy inside.
This is the first baked good recipe I’ve tried from ; I picked it out largely because of its relative simplicity. Some of the pastry and cookie recipes in the book look absolutely incredible but I find a bit intimidating, so this was my delicious way of building up to those. They also served as one of many Valentine’s Day treats, which also included chocolate croissants and macarons.
I had a bit of rye flour left over from some bread the previous week so this presented an opportunity to use a bit of it up. I’m not fully on board the ‘salty-sweet’ food-craze-train, but these certainly make me understand why people like combining the two so much.
The dark chocolate flavor goes very well with the rye flour. If you haven’t baked before with rye flour you should know that it doesn’t make everything taste like a loaf of deli rye bread, that distinct taste comes from caraway seeds that are traditionally added.
Rye flour on its own has a dark, earthy, flavor to it, stronger (I think) than whole wheat flour. There are many popular Western European breads that are made with 100% rye flour, but equally as often it is used in smaller quantities to add something different to a loaf and amplify the other flour tastes. I’ve started replacing 10% of whole wheat flour with rye in many of my loaves.
I’ve halved the recipe from Robertson’s book since the original makes about 4 dozen cookies. If after a week you still haven’t eaten them all, they freeze very well. Enjoy!
- 1⅓ C (225 g) chopped bittersweet or dark chocolate
- 2 Tbsp butter
- ⅓ C rye flour
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- ¾ cup brown sugar
- 1½ tsp vanilla extract
- Coarse salt for sprinkling
- Melt chocolate and butter together using a double boiler, then set aside once completely combined. In a small bowl mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Crack both eggs into the bowl of a stand mixer and whip using the whisk attachment. Whip on medium-high speed, gradually adding the sugar until it has all been incorporated.
- Increase the speed to high and whip until the eggs have tripled in volume, about 5 minutes.
- Reduce the mixer speed to low and add the chocolate-butter mixture along with the vanilla extract. Remove the whisk attachment and using a spatula add in the flour and mix until just combined.
- Cover and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350 F when you put the dough in the refrigerator and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Once the dough has cooled spoon out small dough balls onto the sheets, each about 1 tablespoon. Be sure to leave about 2 inches between them, since they will flatten as they bake.
- Sprinkle a bit of salt on top of each dough ball and press gently with a finger so that it sticks.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes, rotating halfway through. Remove from the oven and let cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.
