Chocolate Chip Cookies With Olive Oil and Sea Salt

"Chocolate and olive oil are a match made in heaven: both nuanced and fruity with a touch of bitter complexity. When combined into a cookie, the pairing shines, only heightened by the sweetness of sugar. Here olive oil is used in place of butter to create a quick, mixer-free cookie dough that turns your standard butter-based recipe on its head. It's a classic chocolate chip cookie dough, but all grown-up, with an alluring fruitiness and slightly savory edge."

"The dough is made by toasting a portion of the flour directly in the olive oil, not unlike making a roux, until the flour is tanned and takes on notes of caramel. This cooked flour mixture is whisked with sugar to create a rich brown-butter-like base without relying on any actual dairy. In fact, the cookie is entirely vegan—but only incidentally so. We found that without eggs, the cookies came out delightfully chewy in the center with a contrasting crisp exterior."

"Baker's tip: When picking out a bottle of olive oil to use, I like to opt for something nice but not an entire splurge. A readily available bottle like California Olive Ranch is a great option, lending the cookie a fruity, ever-so-slightly floral quality. More expensive bottles, often labeled "drizzling" or "finishing," tend to overwhelm the cookie with spicy, grassy notes."

Olive oil replaces butter to produce a quick, mixer-free chocolate chip cookie dough with a fruity, slightly savory profile. A portion of the flour is toasted directly in olive oil, similar to making a roux, until it tans and develops caramel notes. That cooked flour is whisked with sugar to form a rich, brown-butter-like base without dairy. The recipe omits eggs, producing cookies that are chewy in the center and crisp at the edges. Moderate, fruit-forward olive oils work best; intensely spicy or grassy drizzling oils can overwhelm the cookie. The result is a pantry-friendly, vegan-compatible, grown-up chocolate chip cookie.

Read at Epicurious