“These are brilliant! Why hasn’t anyone thought of square cookies before?”
Our old friend Dayalan was impressed. So was Pete – but less by the cookie and more by the application of the engineering directive that if something is tricky and time consuming, find a shortcut.
I’ve baked cookies in slab form before, but they’ve always come out a little gooey and brownie-esque. These ones are proper cookies – they keep well in an airtight container for ages and freeze brilliantly too. I used my half sheet pan from Costco and my tried and trusted chocolate chip cookie dough formula.
The original recipe is quite fiddly to make – the high chocolate to flour ratio (3:2) makes the cookies notoriously prone to spreading, so the dough usually needs a rest in the fridge overnight before shaping. By using a sheet pan, I was able to bake the cookies as soon as the dough was mixed!
Here are the quantities I used – please scale accordingly to suit the size of your baking tray…
- 330g plain flour
- 70g bread or bakers flour
- ½ tsp fine sea salt
- 240g white sugar
- 200g brown sugar
- 250g unsalted butter, cold, cut into small pieces
- 2 large (59g) eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract (I used homemade)
- 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda), sifted
- 300g semisweet chocolate callets (Callebaut 811, 54% cocoa)
- 100g bittersweet chocolate callets (Callebaut 70% cocoa Sao Thome Origin)
- 200g bake stable dark choc chips (Callebaut 44% cocoa baking sticks, broken into small pieces)
Note : Yes, you did read correctly, there is indeed 600g of chocolate in this recipe. I use all dark in my cookies, but please use any combination you prefer. Try to use the best chocolate you can get your hands on!
1. Preheat oven to 150C (with fan). Line a half sheet pan (18 by 13in or 46 by 33cm) with a large sheet of parchment paper.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the cold butter and sugars together, until they form a grainy paste. Beat in the eggs and vanilla until just combined. Do not overmix.
3. In a separate large bowl, stir together the flour, salt and sifted bicarbonate of soda (it’s important to sift the bicarb, or you’ll get bitter lumps in the finished cookie). Add the chocolate to the flour and stir to combine. Add the whole lot to the batter and mix until just incorporated.
4. Tip the mixture onto the lined sheet pan and spread it out evenly with clean, wet hands. It will feel like you’re working with playdough – you might need to pull off chunks of dough and use them to fill in any gaps. When it’s reasonably well spread out, use an offset spatula to smooth out the top as much as possible.
5. Bake the tray for 20 – 25 minutes until golden brown, rotating once at the halfway point. The shorter baking time will result in a gooey-er cookie. I usually bake them a bit longer as I find they cut and store better that way. The huge amount of chocolate means they still stay pretty tender…
6. Allow the cookies to cool completely in the pan on a wire rack, then remove and carefully slice into squares. I like to wrap each cookie separately – they make less mess that way. This is completely optional, of course – I bought bundles of pre-cut greaseproof paper ($2/1000 sheets) from the clearance pallet at Southern Cross Supplies, so I use those…
I usually end up with 48 cookies per tray – half go into an airtight container for immediate consumption, and the rest are either given away or tucked into the freezer for a cookie emergency (they defrost perfectly).
My three men adore these! And I love that their favourite chocolate chip cookies are now so easy to make!
Fig Jam and Lime Cordial 