Salted Butter and Chocolate Chunk Wholegrain Shortbread … a cookie that is taking Instagram by storm, and a darned dangerous idea to wake up to. I woke up this morning to find this post on The Bake Feed staring me in the face. Before I knew it, I had hit the ‘take me to the recipe‘ button, and within minutes I had the KitchenAid stand mixer buzzing away. Any eye catching recipe with chocolate does that to me. I want to bake it immediately!
So many things in the recipe call your name, leave alone that description! I love shortbread in any form, mostly because it reminds me of time spent in the UK several years ago crunching through the most divine shortbread ever! Rich, buttery, indulgent, my most favourite the one we had while staying at a mansion with friends in Edinburgh. The experience stayed in my head forever, maybe the reason why I’m partial to shortbread!
Then again, who wouldn’t be? Alison Roman, a cook, writer, and author of Dining In, says ‘Less chocolate chip cookie, more brown sugar shortbread with chocolate chunks— they just might be the cookie you’ve been looking for.’ It was only after I got the dough together and chilling that I read on The Bake Feeds post “The #cookie recipe that has taken over #Instagram ? We have it, and you’ll want it. Packed with #salted butter and #chocolate chunks, @alisoneroman‘s shortbread #cookies deserve a standing ovation.”
And of course they were right. It does need a standing ovation, even after all the changes I made to the recipe. In line with my current favourite obsession #makehalfyourgrainswhole, I played around with the recipe using half whole wheat flour and half all purpose flour. Few changes to the brown and white sugar too, some baking powder thrown in for good measure!
Also in the general morning confusion {read so much to do, so little time}, in one go, I measured everything but the chocolate {that I still had to chop} into the bowl of the stand mixer. Big oops! Then again, nothing I could do about it so everything had a good stir together, and then in went the chocolate. If you compare the two, my cookies are a lot darker not least because the phone rang and they got a few extra minutes in the oven. They are darker because of the wholegrain and using more brown sugar as compared to white.
I can’t say I’d do anything different next time other than making sure I get them out in time! They turned out drop dead crunchy delicious, resonating everything Alison says about them. I skipped rolling them in egg white to keep the cookies egg free and vegetarian. Do try her version, The Bake Feed version, or then my version. Cookies are meant to be shared, so here you are!
Salted Butter and Chocolate Chunk Wholegrain Shortbread
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup + 1 tbsp salted butter cut into ½-inch pieces, 125g
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar 25g
- 1/2 cup brown sugar 50 g
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1/2 cups all purpose flour 75 g
- 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 75 g
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 100 g 72% dark chocolate chopped into chunks
- Demerara sugar for rolling
- Flaky sea salt
Instructions
Cookie Dough
- Place all the ingredients except the chocolate in the bowl of a stand mixer and process until it comes together to form cookie dough.
- At the lowest speed, stir in the chocolate chunks.
- Turn onto the counter and bring together, then roll into a log about 2-2 1/4" in diameter. Wrap in clingwrap and smoothen the roll if you like. See detailed instructions in the Bake Feed recipe. {link above}
- Chill for about 2 hours
Bake
- Preheat oven to 170C
- Line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Slightly wet your hands and moisten the outside of the roll. Roll in vanilla sugar. Slice the log into 12-13 1/2" thick rounds. Lay on the baking sheet, sprinkle with sea salt.
- Bake for about 18-20 minutes until golden at the edges and firm. Let them sit on the cookie sheet to firm up, then enjoy!
