The Internet-Famous Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies by Alison Roman | NYT Cooking

oh the cookies c18 take one I'm Alison Roman and I am making a salted butter chocolate chunk shortbread cookie also known to some of you as the cookies you gave it that name not me so this is a recipe that originally appeared in my first cookbook dining in the reason I think that it's achieved the success that it has because it is familiar it does have elements of a chocolate chip cookie and elements of a classic shortbread cookie and when the two combines you get the cookie anytime I'm baking anything I like to have all of my ingredients measured first before I start mixing because what can happen is you get to the bottom of the recipe and you realize that the egg that I call for doesn't actually go into the cookie as it goes on the outside and the flaky salt that I call for goes on top not in the dough and I just really gets nice to see everything read the recipe know exactly what you're getting yourself into before proceeding I've never baked anything by the way without getting flour absolutely everywhere and oliver myself and my loved ones and my kitchen and it's just you know whatever will vacuumed I do think that's the most accurate way to measure things especially flower is with a scale every time I weigh a cup of flour it weighs almost exactly 145 grams oh my god 144 grams baby yes I'm in a competition with myself and I won let's see if we can do it again 148 little heavy a little heavy that's fine I feel like as long as you are within like 4 or 5 grams on either side it's not gonna make a huge difference moral the story use the scale if you can now comes our sugar which sugar almost will always weigh the same so quarter cup for me is probably 1/4 cup for you the way that it settles in the cup there's not as much discrepancy so I wouldn't worry too much about that a good thing to know is that this dough freezes really well the recipe can easily be doubled have some for now and have some for later so our basic ingredients are here and accounted for we have salted butter as the name would imply our chocolate and I really like having a lot of different textures of chocolate in this cookie but you know this is like as about as big as I would go I feel like making these cookies for us right now is kind of like a video game where like each level is a new hurdle or a situation so this is butter this is stage 1 actually no measuring shopping is stage 1 because you need to buy the right ingredients measuring is level 2 and now we're at level 3 mixing the dough starting with the butter I like starting with cold butter because you beat it for an eternity I want people to really go for it this is not a suggestion I'm not hinting at maybe combine the butter and sugar together I want you to cream it I want it to be fluffy I want it to be light I wanted to almost look like frosting and it's not because I'm trying to waste your time it's because you're really relying on this air which is also what gives it that like when you bite into it it feels somehow light and fluffy almost like a puff pastry it should be very flaky beating the air into it at this stage is what's gonna get you there so I'm gonna scrape down everything to kind of make sure that all the butter at the bottom is getting mixed with all of the sugar all right our butter and sugar is pretty much there can see in this bowl it already looks like there's more stuff in there and now I'm going to add my flour [Music] you basically want to mix it until the dough comes together to give it a few turns I want you to look at this dough I always tell people that it should resemble play-doh it shouldn't be dry it shouldn't be crumbly it should look you know like cookie dough now you've all used to be able to like make a log cabin with I don't know what he do with play-doh anyone who's ever tried to wrap anything in plastic wrap you know that it is nothing but heartbreak and from here we're gonna shape it into logs and you kind of you know it doesn't have to be perfect it just looks like a blob so this is decidedly more square than round but the round happenes now you just kind of roll it and your cute little large Oh God where will they go don't look at me look in here oh my god I should have thought about that before ah what a nightmare who lives here doesn't bear Seng uh anyway in they go thank you good night the cookies are taking a little nap in the fridge they're gonna be there for at least two hours don't look in here get out of there okay it's doesn't look better than the last time we went in so I forget what level we're at in that crazy metaphor that I brought up earlier but um is the second to last level we're gonna roll it in egg wash and like you're mixing paint or something or feeding an egg I'm sure something that you do more often than mix paint I like to put this sugar in a like a baking dish or a rimmed baking sheet or something like that just like your breading a chicken cutlet or something my analogy is today are really something else so really you're just kind of looking for a nice thin layer which is why I like using a brush just kind of paint the outside and then you can kind of just roll the cookies like this once I seen these cookies I go about a half inch thick sometimes even when I'm cutting them the dough will crumble a little bit and that's okay because you can kind of piece it together if it's pretty forgiving this is probably the most common thing that will happen to my cookies when you get to like a large chunk but I literally just put it back together Oh Humpty Dumpty situation we all know that one yeah they can go definitely closer together these cookies will not spread so to finish they're gonna get a sprinkling of salt and you're not gonna use kosher salt you're gonna use a nice coarse flaky salt and now they go in the oven it's been about 11 12 minutes and our cookies are ready to be taken out of the oven so you can tell they're ready because they are golden brown around the edges they're still pretty pale in the center but they're crispy they smell amazing and I think they look pretty perfect little babies go ahead and transfer them to you know one by one to a wire rack or if I had more parchment kind of letting them cool here these are the kind of cookies that are truly better at room temp they are not like a chocolate-chip cookie where you want to eat them warm put an extremely fun plate of cookies and my favorite one is gonna go on top there there are cookies our cookies the cookies cookie salted butter chocolate chunk shortbread cookie and now comes the moment we've all been waiting for so they should be crunchy they should be crispy that texture in there that is like kind of almost like laminate II it's like flaky and but still dense is exactly what we're looking for mmm I think my favorite part about them is that to me to the best of every world like they have that vanilla and brown sugar and like crispy edge business that a chocolate chip cookie does and they've got the dense buttery flakiness that a shortbread does so to me it is like absolutely the perfect cookie hmm they're really good you guys they're really good for the recipe and a lot more you can check out New York Times cooking [Music]

Channel: NYT Cooking

Views: 1,194,701

Keywords: cooking, cooks, recipes, recipe, how-to, how to, kitchen, new york times, new york times cooking, nyt cooking, nyt, nytimes, the cookies, alison roman, alison e roman, Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies, shortbread, chocolate chip, chocolate chip cookie, shortbread cookie, cookie, cookies, dessert, cookie recipe, chocolate chip cookie recipe

Id: wrxn0-FtBfI

Length: 8min 5sec (485 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 31 2019