GIANT SEA SALT CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

So I’ve seen the giant levain cookies everywhere for a while, and living nowhere near New York, I could never get my hands on them. Additionally, all the levain cookie recipes online require a stand mixer, which I don’t have either! So I’ve been brainstorming how to make my own giant tennis ball sized version, and after some delicious trial and error, I think I have an amazing, tall, chunky, chocolate chip cookie recipe.

INGREDIENTS

• 250 g cold butter

• 200 g dark brown sugar

• 70 g white sugar

• 2 eggs

• Splash of vanilla

• Pinch of salt

• 450 g flour

• 5 g baking soda

• 200 g chocolate chips

INSTRUCTIONS

• If you’ve worked with pie dough, this will be very familiar, but you’re going to cut the butter up into pieces. In Europe, 250g of butter is 1 block, so I cut lengthwise with my dough cutter/ bench scraper a few different ways, and then cut it further so they’re like 1 inch cubes. Then smash the butter into the sugar with your fingers. Because this is cold butter, you won’t be creaming the butter and sugar together, but instead smashing it into the sugar until the butter is little pea sized pieces. Add the salt here as well.

• Add the eggs one at a time and then the vanilla, using a spatula to mix the eggs into the sugar and butter.

• Add the baking soda to the flour.

• Add the flour and baking soda mix in about a quarter of it at a time. Essentially, try not to dump all of the flour into the wet mix at once. Add a bit at a time so you can make sure all the flour gets hydrated.

• When all the flour’s been added, mix in the chocolate chips. Try not to knead the cookie dough or work it too much.

• And then put some plastic wrap over the bowl and pop it in the fridge, ideally overnight, but it totally works if you wait at least an hour. You just want the butter to get nice and cold again so the cookies don’t spread too much in the oven.

• Now preheat the oven to 200*C/ 400*F.

• Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

• When the oven is ready, take large scoops out and make tennis ball sized round mounds with your hands. This batch makes about 10 tennis ball sized cookies. [You want to get the cold cookie dough into the oven quickly, so don’t shape the cookie dough and leave it on the counter. If you’re making a batch and the oven is still preheating, pop the tray with the cookie dough on it into the fridge while you wait for the oven to get hot.]

• Bake for 10-15 minutes/ depending on your oven, so keep an eye on them after 10.

• Sprinkle Maldon sea salt on the cookies when they come out of the oven hot.

• Enjoy!