Thin chocolate chunk crisps.
Usually my kind of chocolate chip cookie is a thick, soft, chewy, loaded with dark chocolate chunks piece of heaven. However, occasionally I find myself craving the total opposite so for those odd times, I came up with this recipe.
These little rounds are just deliciously thin, crispy, and crunchy. They are so delicate they just about dissolve upon first bite and can turn into a beautiful crumbly mess in your palm if you don't handle with care.
Every few nibbles you get a hint of salt or a chocolate chunk so your buds rejoice with every taste. A dash of cinnamon takes these littles to the next level. These cookies are not overly sweet but will certainly satisfy the sweet tooth. However, if your preference is a sweeter cookie, you can add another 1/4 to 1/2 cup of sugar. Alternatively you can use a sweeter chocolate such as milk or toffee/butterscotch chocolate in place of the dark chocolate.
When I wanted to whip these up, I just happened to be out of butter (I have no idea how that happened to me... I'm NEVER out of butter!) and since the craving would not subside, I used what I did have on hand - coconut oil. The butter shortage turned out to be a blessing because not only does the coconut oil give these cookies the crumbly crispiness, the hint of coconut flavour is bliss. When mixing together all the ingredient, you'll find that the coconut oil will separate a little. Just give the whole thing another quick stir and you're golden.
You don't need much to get a medium-sized round so I suggest dropping little dollops of dough onto the cookie sheet. I placed about 1 teaspoon of dough and ended up with approximately a 2.5" cookie, which for me is just the right size for a bite or two. If you prefer bigger cookies, by all means load more dough, but flatten your little mountains down just a tad to ensure you end up with flat, uniformly thin cookies.
Be sure to give each dollop generous room to spread as these cookies really do go thin, otherwise you'll end up with one huge cookie checkerboard.
I baked mine on aluminum sheets for exactly 10 minutes with the convection on. If you are using teflon-coated baking sheets, I suggest checking your cookies sooner rather than later. Teflon sheets (or any other dark coloured sheet) delivers more heat and can burn faster, especially here where the cookies are very thin. If you like a bit of a crispier cookie, you can bake them for another minute or two, but watch them closely as they tend to go from baked to burnt in the blink of an eye.
And if the taste and texture weren't awesome enough, I've got to say the best part about these cookies is the time it takes to make: literally 5 minutes! When you're a busy momma like me, you're probably making these in between dinner and bath time (which in my house is usually 10 minutes) with your tired kiddies clinging to your legs, whining for this or that, OR at 11 pm when you've spent your entire day in the kitchen and the last thing you want to do is spend more time in the kitchen! Don't bother with your fancy mixer (or any mixer for that matter), just do it up old school style with a bowl and a whisk. Delicious cookies and less dished to wash... that's my kinda bakin'!!!
Thin Chocolate Chunk Crisps
Yields: 4 dozen
Ingredients:
1 cup extra virgin coconut oil
1 cup cane sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp Himalayan salt
2 tsp cinnamon
100g bar of dark chocolate, coarsely chopped
Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Lina baking sheet with parchment paper.
In a bowl using a whisk mix together the sugar and coconut oil. Add egg and vanilla extract and mix until evenly combined.
Add salt, baking soda, and cinnamon. Mix well.
Add flour. Mix well.
Add chopped chocolate and mix until evenly combined.
Drop approximately 1 tsp of dough onto cookie sheet at 3" apart.
Bake for 8-12 minutes or until golden brown throughout and the edges of cookies just begin to brown, rotating halfway through.
Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet, then carefully transfer to an air tight container.
*Because we follow a fully organic, health-conscious lifestyle, I only use organic, fair trade, natural, unprocessed ingredients in all my cooking and baking. In this recipe I have used cane sugar in place of refined sugar, Himalayan salt in place of iodized salt, and the rest of the ingredients are organic. If you don't have these on hand, it should be okay to substitute with the conventional options and still get the same results (although I have not tested this recipe in this way).