Salted Chocolate Cookies

What a weekend.

I woke up at 3 am with a sneezing fit. Yup, the sneezing actually woke me up. And woke up poor Mr. Smith. So we were both up despite the fact that our normally early rising children were sleeping soundly.

The Boo woke up at 4:20 and Grand Master H joined us a little after 5 am.

It makes for a very long day.

Despite being exhausted, Mr. Smith and I went out to dinner. After dinner we went out to purchase pants for Mr. Smith.

This is a pretty big event. Mr. Smith, like most men, does not shop voluntarily. Things have to literally be falling to pieces before he is driven to purchase new clothes.

The last time he bought dress pants, I was 9 months pregnant and the salesman was genuinely concerned I might go into to labor in the Men's Fixtures (HA!) Department.

That baby is about 2 months shy of his 6th birthday. You can imagine the state of those pants.

At first, Mr. Smith could only find one pair of pants and when he found out the dressing rooms were locked he had a mini tantrum. Luckily, I deal with tantrum-throwers all.day.long.every.single.day. I got that tantrum thing sorted. I told him we were not leaving until he purchased some new pants. Period.

He tried on the pants. And they were perfect, they just needed to be hemmed.

So, new pants.

On Sunday, I made Salted Chocolate Cookies. The recipe came to me from Tartine via Orangette and oh my is it ever a keeper.

We went to the park to meet Grand Master H's new friend.

Everything was fine and then Grand Master H launched into one of his epic meltdowns. He was hungry and he was PISSED. He was screaming at me, calling me a freak, as we made our way out of the park. He took off his seatbelt on the ride home and menaced me from the backseat. When we got home, he jumped out of the car, took his shirt off and ran around the front yard screaming and ran all over. He refused to go into the house, preferring to stage his protest for the whole street.

I dragged him into the house and ran upstairs and attempted to jump over the railing on the second floor down to into the entryway.

This festival of fun went on for the better part of 45 minutes.

Finally, he started to lose the momentum he had built up and ate some PEZ. As soon as the sugar hit his bloodstream, I could see that the switch had flipped and my sweet, sensitive boy was back. He climbed, all elbows and knees, onto my lap and sobbed. He was so full of remorse. He felt horrible for the things he had said and done, but was just now being hit with the realization that he had hurt feelings of people he cares about. A hard thing to face, even when you are 45, let alone 5.

After getting everyone in bed, I ate several Salted Chocolate Cookies,
had a good cry and went to bed.

The cookies helped. The crying just made me congested.

If you need a good cry, believe me, I feel you.
If you need a good chocolate cookie, I am here to help.

Salted Chocolate Cookies


8 ounces good quality bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (I used Ghirardelli 70%)
1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour (I added an additional 1/3 cup)
½ cup plus 2 Tbsp. unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsp. baking powder
8 Tbsp. unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup plus 2 Tbsp. sugar, plus more for rolling the logs (I used Swedish Pearl Sugar)
2 large eggs
¼ tsp. table salt
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup whole milk
Maldon salt, for finishing (I used some fancy sea salt from France)


Melt the chocolate in a double boiler. Just heat it on gently. Stir occasionally, just until the chocolate melts and is smooth. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa, and baking powder. Set aside.


In a stand mixer, beat butter until fluffy. Gradually add sugar. Add eggs one at a time, mixing until completely blended. Mix in salt and vanilla and then the melted chocolate. Add the milk.

Finally, add the flour mixture and mix until just blended. 

Orangette said the recipe would be quite thick, but mine was still pretty fluid, so I threw in the extra 1/3 cup flour. It was still quite soft dough, but I forged ahead.

I divided the dough in half and placed on plastic wrap. I used the wrap to form to logs. Refrigerate overnight. When you are ready to bake the cookies. Remove from wrap and roll the log in sugar of your choice. And cut 1/4 to 1/3 inch slices. Place on baking sheet 2 inches apart. Sprinkle with a few flakes of salt and bake for about 10 minutes.

These will keep at room temperature for several days, but they won't be around that long. Especially if you have a particularly rough day.