Chewy Crinkle-Top Brownie Cookies
Everything you love about a chewy, fudgy brownie in cookie form, with paper-thin shiny, crinkly tops and a sprinkle of flaky sea salt for the perfect finish! Because of the time-sensitive nature of these cookies (see notes) I do not recommend doubling this recipe.
Yield: 32-36 2.5-inch cookies
Ingredients
For Cookies:
- scant 1 cup / 120 g all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon / g whole milk powder, optional
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon instant espresso powder
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 6 tablespoons / 84 g unsalted butter , cut into cubes
- 6 tablespoons / 33 g Dutch-process cocoa powder, sifted
- 4 oz / 110 g good quality semisweet chocolate (50-60%), finely chopped
- ¾ cup / 150 g granulated sugar
- ¼ cup / 55 g packed brown sugar
- 2 large eggs, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- flaky sea salt, for topping
Instructions
- Arrange oven racks in the lower and upper thirds of your oven (so you can bake two sheets at once), and/or preheat two ovens if you have them. Line three baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Whisk together flour, milk powder, baking powder, salt and espresso powder in a bowl and set aside.
- Gently melt butter in a saucepan over low heat. When it is mostly melted, add cocoa powder, and stir until smooth and no bits of unmelted butter or chunks of undissolved cocoa remain. Remove from heat and add chopped chocolate; the residual heat should be enough to melt it, but you can put it back on low heat briefly if necessary to fully melt the chocolate. Set aside to cool slightly.
- Place eggs and sugars in a large mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat on medium-high speed until lightened in color, about 2 to 3 minutes.
- Reduce mixer speed to low and drizzle in melted chocolate mixture, mixing until batter is uniform in color. Mix in vanilla. Add dry ingredients and mix on low speed or by hand until just incorporated, scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl to ensure there aren't any streaks of flour remaining.
- Using a small cookie scoop (about 18-20g, or 1 tablespoon-ish of dough per cookie) drop dollops of dough onto prepared baking sheets, leaving at least 2 inches of space between them. The dough will be very soft (think brownie batter consistency), and will slump into fairly flat rounds. Ideally you want to get all your cookies scooped and into the oven within 15 minutes (if the batter sits longer than that the cookies won't have the same uniform flat shape or the crinkly, shiny top).
- Sprinkle tops of cookies with flake sea salt, if desired, then bake for about 8 minutes or until tops are shiny and crackly in appearance.
- Remove from oven and immediately swirl a round cookie cutter (slightly larger than the diameter of the cookie) around each still-soft cookie to tuck in any rough edges and perfect the circular shape. Let cool on sheets for 10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Cookies will keep, refrigerated in an airtight container, for up to one week, or frozen in a zip-top bag for up to 2 months.
Notes
- It's important to get these cookies scooped and into the oven quickly, no more than 15 minutes from when you finish the batter to when they go into the oven. Any longer than that and the cookies will be more ball-like and won't have the same shiny, crackly top. I prepare 3 cookie sheets ahead of time, and bake two of them simultaneously in the same oven (or two ovens if you have them). Have the 3rd sheet ready when the first batch comes out.