It’s cookie time. Well, it’s always cookie time. But, come on, it’s mid-December which is essentially the cookie-lympics of cookiedom! Or something like that.

If you live in or near Brooklyn, we invite you to partake in Baked’s Twelve Days of Cookies! Each and every day, the Baked kitchen staff will be making a favorite cookie available for sale in our Red Hook store. Yup, that’s one new cookie per day for the next 12 days!!! If you don’t live in Brooklyn, you should move here or visit more often or ask us to come visit you. Regardless, our bakers will be sharing (via the blog) a favorite kitchen tool or book that every baker must have (er…”that every Santa should buy for the baker in their life”).

And to start things off (a day early, thank you very much), I would like to share this incredible chocolate rye cookie with you. The recipe is adapted from Saveur.com which adapted the original recipe from Tartine Book no. 3 (p.s. buy this book…it is on our Cookbooks You Need For Fall list).

All you need to know about this cookie is that the recipe calls for about 16 ounces of chocolate for 24 cookies. Sold.

Notes:

The recipe on Saveur says to use 2 ⅔ cups of chocolate, which I usually (roughly) interpret as 6 ounces/cup.

The rye flour is absolutely necessary from a taste perspective – it is delectable and nutty and delicious. I can’t imagine getting the same taste profile out of regular flour (though, yes, I am fairly sure they will bake just fine with regular flour…).

The salt sprinkle was kind of a divisive attribute. I loved it, but a few pals brushed it off as “unnecessary”.

I chilled my dough overnight – it gets really hard – but after sitting at room temperature for 30 minutes, it was easy to work with and made a delicious firm outside/gooey inside cookie. See for yourself below:

SALTED CHOCOLATE RYE COOKIES adapted from Tartine Book no. 3

¾ cup whole-grain dark rye flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon kosher salt
14 ounces dark chocolate (I used 72%), finely chopped
4 tablespoons. unsalted butter, cut into pieces
4 large eggs, at room temperature
1½ cups light brown sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Maldon salt or fleur de sel, for sprinkling

In a small bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder and salt.

Place chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water – keep , stirring until just melted and combined. Remove bowl from pan; set aside.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with whisk attachment, whip eggs on medium speed until fluffy. Keep the mixer on low and slowly add sugar. Once all the sugar is added, increase speed to medium-high and keep beating until eggs have nearly tripled in volume, about 6 minutes. Add reserved chocolate mixture and the vanilla; mix until combined. Again, with mixer on low, slowly add dry ingredients until a soft, loose dough forms. Cover dough with plastic wrap; chill 30 minutes.

Heat oven to 350°. Using 2 tablespoons for each, drop cookies onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets, spaced about 2” apart. Sprinkle cookies with Maldon salt or fleur de sel; bake until cookies are puffed, 8-10 minutes (rotate pans halfway through the baking time).