Salted Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies
by Alison Roman, adapted by Andrew Hachten
This is my take on Alison Roman's famous Salted Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies. It's a fantastic recipe but after following it exactly as written a few times I found some ways to make them even better.
The first issue to address was that the original recipe's bake time was way too short (many comments agree with this as well). After purchasing an oven thermometer I determined that my oven was perfect and absolutely faultless. So I just doubled the time! Which resulted in a perfectly crispy exterior, but an overbaked interior.
The easiest way to remedy that was to make each cookie thicker, so that's where I started. That successfully prevented the interior from overbaking but I still felt like something was missing. So I went absolutely nuts and replaced the all-purpose flour with pastry flour and the granulated sugar with powdered sugar. The result was a fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth middle!
And finally, after enough uneven coatings of demerara sugar I decided to overhaul that next. I started cutting each log into cookies and then coating each individual cookie to great success! It takes longer but it allows for much more precision and consistency.
After all of that experimenting I realized that I had stopped following the original recipe's steps a long time ago. So I wrote my own with a focus on making easy-to-follow granular steps!
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    255g salted butter (cold)
    •
    90g powdered sugar
    •
    60g light brown sugar
    •
    1tbsp vanilla extract
    •
    325g pastry flour
    •
    180g chocolate (bittersweet or semi-sweet or both)
    •
    75g demerara sugar
    •
    20g flaky sea salt
1.
Using a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugars, and vanilla on medium-high until very light and fluffy (3-5 minutes).
2.
Turn the stand mixer off, scrape down the sides, and set the mixer to low.
3.
Add the flour in ~8 increments, allowing the flour to become fully incorporated before adding more.
4.
Turn the stand mixer off, add the chocolate chips to the dough, and incorporate either by hand or with a wooden spoon. Don't mix too much or too forcefully.
5.
Separate the dough into two equal halves and form each half into a log roughly 8” (20cm) long. Wrap each log in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight (or at least 2 hours).
6.
When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350°F (180°C).
7.
Lightly beat the egg in a small bowl. Place the demerara sugar in a different bowl or plate (whichever you prefer). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
8.
Take one of the logs out of the fridge and use a straight edge knife to cut the log into 12 equal slices.
9.
Coat the side of each slice by rolling in the egg wash then the demerara sugar.
10.
Repeat for the other log.
11.
Put both baking trays in the oven. Check them after 10 minutes and rotate trays if they're baking unevenly. Bake for another 10-15 minutes for a total of 20-25 minutes.
12.
Right after taking them out of the oven, sprinkle each cookie with flaky sea salt and let cool on the tray for 3-5 minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack and let cool for another 10 minutes.