Chocolate

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

8/10/2020 10:15:00 PM

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies! These rich fudgy cookies are a total chocolate bomb. The rye flour gives them a subtle tang, and a generous sprinkle of flaky sea salt really makes them pop!
Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies
Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies


I spent much of Melbourne Lockdown One searching (unsuccessfully) for rye flour, hoping that it would help kick my slow-to-start sourdough starter into gear. It turned out to be far more elusive than I expected, not because of panic buying and shortages, but rather because none of my local stores (supermarkets, speciality stores, health-food stores, organic bulk food stores etc.) seemed to stock it as a regular line. My local supermarket is huge and has a great range of flours - they stock buckwheat, spelt, coconut, tapioca and even banana flours (banana flour, honestly!) as regular items on their shelves, but for some reason rye flour doesn't get a look in.

By the time I found some rye flour, at a nearby gourmet grocer sometime between Lockdown One and (sigh) Lockdown Two, my starter was going great guns and didn't need the rye-boost. However, rye flour had been on the brain for so long that I had to buy a packet!

The first thing I wanted to bake with my rye flour were chocolate cookies. I'd had a gorgeous squidgy dark chocolate and rye cookie at 10 Belles in Paris last year, and wanted to recreate that deliciousness at home. A quick Google search revealed that the Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies from the Tartine No. 3 cookbook were all over the internet and incredibly popular - decision made! (For those of you who don't know, Tartine is an über-famous bakery in San Francisco. I can also recommend the flaky pastry recipe from their first cookbook).

This recipe is very different from the usual cookie recipes I follow - standard cookie recipes start with creaming butter and sugar, then adding eggs, flour and add-ins like chocolate chips or nuts. However, this recipe starts with you whisking eggs and sugar until light and fluffy and tripled in volume, then folding in an obscene amount of melted chocolate and a little melted butter. There's just a very small amount of rye flour added to bind. The result is a soft cookie that packs a real chocolate punch. It's basically like a miniature portable brownie in cookie form.
Salted Chocolate Rye Cookie Dough
Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

I decided to write up the recipe here - even though it's already all over the internet in dozens of places - because all the recipes I saw were on American websites and were in cup measurements, not weights. Usually I don't have a huge problem baking with cups (in Australia we tend to use a hybrid of cups and gram measurements anyway), and by now I've memorised the conversion of cups/tablespoons to weight for butter. However, the main sticking point for me was that using cup measurements for chocolate made no sense. "2 and 2/3 cups finely chopped chocolate". What is that even? How finely chopped does it need to be? The size of a standard chocolate chip? Or do you keep chopping until it becomes a pure powder? Obviously the less finely you chop the chocolate, the less actual chocolate you'll fit into those measuring cups, so you could have huge variations in the amount of chocolate in the cookies. And importantly, how much chocolate do you need to chop to get that amount?
Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies
Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

Anyway, to figure this out, when I made the cookies, I started by chopping a one-hundred gram block of chocolate into fine shards (slightly larger than if you were to crumble a Flake bar with your hands) and scraping it into a measuring cup. I kept chopping and adding chocolate in twenty gram increments until I got enough to fill the measuring cups. It turns out that you need one hundred and eighty five grams of chopped chocolate to make 1 and 1/3 cups. The cookies turned out super delicious and mega chocolatey, so I'm confident sharing the "185 gram" measurement in the recipe below for you all (and for future Sarah).
Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies
Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies

Apart from converting the Tartine Salted Chocolate Rye Cookie recipe to metric weight measurements, I also halved the quantities to make a more sensible portion for a two-person household in lockdown. As I keep telling you, we are actually a three-person household, but only two of us are onto solid foods. It's not quite the small-batch baking of my previous efforts (small batch scones, baby-batch buckwheat brownies, petite passionfruit loaf cake), but I suppose at least it's not wantonly hedonistic or wasteful. However, looking at the ingredient list now, I feel that the quantities could definitely be halved again. If I do get around to testing this out in future, I'll update this post with the results.

They've lasted quite well sitting out on a plate in the living room for the past few days; I'd suggest popping them in an airtight container if you want to keep them longer.

Enjoy!

Salted Chocolate Rye Cookies
Adapted from Tartine No. 3

Ingredients
55 grams (1/4 cup + 2 tablespoons) rye flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon fine salt
185 grams (1 + 1/3 cup finely chopped) dark chocolate, 70% cocoa solids
30 grams (2 tablespoons) unsalted butter
2 eggs
150 grams (3/4 cups) dark brown sugar
1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
Flaky salt, for sprinkling

Method
Place the rye flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl and whisk to combine. Set aside.
Place the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Allow to melt, stirring occasionally, until melted. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
Place the eggs into the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Whisk for 2 minutes or until fluffy. With the mixer running add the brown sugar, a tablespoon at a time, and continue whisking almost tripled in volume, about 6 minutes in total.
Pour in the chocolate mixture and the vanilla, and whisk until combined.
Add the flour mixture and whisk until combined.
Use a flexible spatula to mix the dough through and check for any last pockets of flour.
Cover the bowl with clingfilm and refrigerate for 30 minutes or overnight.
Preheat the oven to 175C. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
Scoop 2 tablespoon-sized balls of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, allowing room for spreading. Sprinkle with flaky salt.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until cookies are puffed and the outsides are dry.
Allow to cool on the baking sheets until firm, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool further.
Makes approx. 12-15 cookies

Have you made this recipe? Leave a comment below! Tag me on Instagram @sarahcooksblog and hashtag #sarahcooksblog

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