What they tell you about production life is that you will have no life outside of it. I can now attest that it is 100% true. So I am not kidding when I say that this cookie recipe was what I held on to for sake of my sanity to preserve a shred of that "normal life" throughout a brilliant little production called The Great Australian Spelling Bee :) I promise you, it is the most perfect chocolate chip cookie in the world (at least the world as I've known it)
Dark Chocolate Chunk & Sea Salt Cookies
Adapted from Smitten Kitchen 's Salted Choc Chunk Cookies which in turn was from Ashley Rodriguez’s Not Without Salt (site) and Date Night In (book)
Yield: Approximately 18 to 24 cookies (for a production crew I make the below recipe 4 times, in 2 batches to yield approximately 100 cookies)
113 grams salted butter, at room temperature
2 tablespoons castor sugar
3/4 cup plus 4 tablespoons packed light brown sugar
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
Heaped 1/4 teaspoon table salt
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
250g dark chocolate, chopped roughly
Flaky Maldon sea salt, to finish
Heat oven to 360°F or 175°C Fan-forced and line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicon baking mat.
In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars together with an electric mixer until very light and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Add egg and vanilla, beating until incorporated, and scraping down the bowl as needed. Beat in salt fine sea or table salt and baking soda until combined, then the flour on a low speed until just mixed. The dough will look crumbly at this point. With a spatula, fold/stir in the chocolate chunks.
Scoop cookies into 1 1/2 tablespoon mounds, spacing them apart on the prepared baking sheet. Sprinkle each with a few flakes of sea salt. Bake for 11 to 12 minutes, until golden on the outside but still very gooey and soft inside. Out of the oven, let rest on baking sheet out of the for 5 minutes before transferring a cooling rack.
Eat them all, but it's better to actually share them.