Brown butter, banana and tahini chocolate chunk cookies
It’s hard to think of a biscuit more universally adored than a chocolate chip cookie, or a recipe more fiercely debated. Chewy or crisp? Thick or thin? Chocolate chips or gooey chunks?
The inventor, Ruth Graves Wakefield, the owner of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, came up with her Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie recipe in the late 1930s. Requiring relatively basic ingredients, the cookies were simple to bake and deliciously comforting served warm from the oven. Wakefield tweaked the recipe over the years and here’s my version: banana, tahini and chocolate are an outrageously tasty combination. MAKES ABOUT 28
150g unsalted butter
120g plain flour
120g spelt flour
¾tsp baking powder
½tsp bicarbonate of soda ½tsp fine sea salt
280g dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids), roughly chopped, with some biggish chunks and some smaller bits
1 very ripe banana, about
100g without skin
1 large egg
220g soft light brown
sugar
40g granulated sugar
1tsp vanilla extract
80g tahini (must be smooth and runny enough to run off a spoon easily)
Flaked sea salt, for
sprinkling
1 Place the butter in a heavy, pale-coloured pan and melt over a medium-high heat, swirling frequently, until the butter smells gorgeously nutty and has turned dark brown. Remove from the heat and transfer to a mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, making sure you scrape in all the brown bits from the bottom of the pan (this is flavour!). Leave to cool for at least 5min.
2 Meanwhile, using a fork or balloon whisk, whisk the flours, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt together in a bowl to combine. Add the chopped chocolate and stir to evenly distribute.
3 In a small bowl, mash the banana until smooth, then add to the cooled butter, along with the egg, both sugars, vanilla and tahini. Whisk for 5min until creamy and much paler than when you started – this is a sign the mixture is aerated.
4 Fold in the flour and chocolate mixture in two additions. Don’t overmix – dough with an uneven consistency delivers welcome texture to the baked cookies. Chill for at least 2hr.
5 Preheat the oven to 170°C/150°C fan/gas mark 3 and line a large baking sheet with baking paper
(you’ll need to cook these in batches). Scoop heaped tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheet (about 40-45g per scoop), leaving at least 5cm between them. Bake for 6min, then turn the baking sheet round and bake for a further 6min or so until brown at the edges (the centre might look a little undercooked but it’s not). Repeat until all the mixture has been used.
6 Lightly sprinkle the cookies with the flaked salt while still warm. Leave on the baking sheet for 5min, then transfer to a wire rack to cool. HB