Coffee, Toffee + Dark Chocolate Cookies
Super delicious, chewy cookies, flavoured with coffee and brown butter and laden with chunks of melting dark chocolate and crunchy, homemade toffee pieces.
Servings 16 cookies
Ingredients
For the toffee bits:
- 55 g unsalted butter
- 100 g light brown soft sugar
- 1 tbsp water
For the cookies:
- 170 g unsalted butter
- 200 g light brown soft sugar
- 50 g caster sugar
- 1 whole egg + 1 yolk
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract
- 240 g plain flour
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 1/2 tbsp instant coffee granules, finely ground (see Note 1).
- 1 pinch flaky sea salt, plus extra for sprinkling
- 300 g dark chocolate, chopped
Instructions
For the toffee bits:
- Line a rimmed baking tray with greaseproof paper and set aside.
- Place all of the ingredients for the toffee into a small saucepan over medium heat. Stir gently while the butter melts and the sugar dissolves.
- Once the sugar has dissolved, stop stirring and allow the toffee to bubble away until it reaches 146°C. You can gently swirl the pan during this time, but do not stir the mixture, or your toffee might crystallise.
- When the toffee has reached 146°C, take the pan off the heat and stir vigorously to ensure the mixture is homogenous. Pour onto the lined baking tray and set aside at room temperature to cool down and harden fully- about 20 minutes.
- When the toffee has cooled completely (it should be hard and brittle at this point), use a rolling pin to crack it up into small pieces. The toffee can be use immediately, or stored in an airtight container for up to a week.
For the cookies:
- Begin by browning the butter. Place the butter into a small saucepan over medium heat. Allow the butter to melt, then cook, stirring frequently, until the butter smells nutty and the milk solids have turned a deep brown colour. Remove the pan from the heat and allow the butter to cool to room temperature before using (see Note 2).
- Place the brown butter and both sugars into the bowl of a stand mixer, fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix on medium speed until combined.
- Add the egg, egg yolk and vanilla extract to the butter/sugar mixture. Beat on medium speed until well-combined and fluffy- about 30 seconds.
- Sift the flour, baking soda and coffee granules into the mixture. Add the salt, then mix on low speed until the dry ingredients are mostly incorporated.
- Add the dark chocolate chunks and smashed toffee pieces and mix again, just until incorporated. Place the bowl into the fridge and allow the cookie dough to chill for 1 hour, or overnight.
- Just before the dough is ready to come out of the fridge, preheat the oven to 190°C. Line 2 baking trays with greaseproof paper and set aside.
- When the cookie dough has chilled, remove it from the fridge and divide it into 16 even balls (I used a regular-sized ice cream scoop for this, but you could also weigh the cookie dough balls- each ball should be about 65g). Place the cookie dough balls onto the lined trays, making sure to leave plenty of space between them (they will spread as they bake).
- Bake the cookies for 10 minutes, or until they have turned a deep brown colour around the edges (the coffee makes these cookies darker than average chocolate chip cookies, so look for a deep brown, rather than a golden colour).
- When the cookies come out of the oven, place an upturned bowl (you need one that is slightly bigger than the cookies themselves) over one cookie and quickly move it around and around in small circles, keeping it flush against the tray. This will make sure that your cookie stays nice and thick, has a perfectly round shape and, as a bonus, will bring any toffee that might have oozed out during the baking process back into the cookie. Repeat for the other cookies, then sprinkle with flaky sea salt and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes before serving. The cookies will last for 4-5 days if stored in an airtight container, but are best eaten warm (ideally fresh from the oven).
Notes
- I like to grind instant coffee granules in a mortar and pestle for this recipe, so that I have a really fine powder that distributes evenly throughout the dough. You can skip the grinding step, if you would prefer, but your cookies will be speckled with the coffee granules. You could also use espresso powder, instead, but I would recommend reducing the amount of coffee if you do. Don't use brewed coffee (it will make your dough too wet!) or coffee grounds (this would affect the texture of your cookies).
- Your brown butter needs to be at room temperature before you make the dough, to ensure your cookies bake perfectly. You can leave it to cool by itself, but it will take a little while to come to temperature (brown butter is very hot when it has just been made!). I like to transfer my butter to a small, heatproof bowl and sit that in a larger bowl, filled with ice water. Stir it every now and then and, after about 10 minutes, the butter will be cool enough to use.