The lovechild of a brownie and a cookie, these cookies have a chewy crust and a squidgy middle. You can also eat them sandwiched around ice cream. They are best eaten within a day or two (if they last that long).–Leah Hyslop
Cracked Brownie Cookie FAQs
‘Caster’ is a term common in the UK, and is likely a familiar word to many bakers and chefs around the world. It just refers to sugar that has a consistency somewhere between granulated and powdered sugar. In the United States, caster sugar can be found at your local markets under the names superfine sugar, baker’s sugar, and yes, even caster sugar.
Eggs and egg whites tend to produce much greater volume when incorporated into recipes at room temperature. While you may not notice a difference in this recipe, when making cakes or meringues – when volume is the goal – always let your eggs come to room temperature before working with them.
Cracked Brownie Cookies
Ingredients
- 7 ounces dark chocolate (around 70% cocoa solids), roughly broken into pieces
- 7 tablespoons (3 1/2 oz) unsalted butter, chopped into rough cubes
- 1 3/4 ounces dark muscovado sugar or dark brown sugar
- 5 1/4 ounces caster sugar (or blitz granulated sugar in a food processor until finely ground)
- 2 large eggs
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon table salt
- 3 1/2 ounces milk chocolate, finely chopped into chunks
- 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C). Line 2 or 3 large rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper.
- In a medium saucepan over low heat, combine the dark chocolate and the butter and melt together, stirring regularly. Take off the heat and scrape into a bowl to cool for 5 to 10 minutes.
- Put the dark muscovado sugar and caster sugar in a large clean bowl. Crack in the eggs. Beat with a handheld electric mixer until pale and fluffy, 3 to 4 minutes.
- Slowly pour the melted chocolate and butter into the bowl and fold in gently. Sift over the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt, and mix until just combined. Stir in the milk chocolate chunks. This will be an unusually wet cookie mixture – definitely not something you can handle with your hands!
- Working quickly, use a tablespoon or cookie scoop to take out a heaped scoop (2 to 3 tablespoons) of the mixture, and place on the prepared baking sheet.
- Repeat with the rest of the mixture. You should be able to get 12 to 18 cookies altogether, 6 on each baking sheet, just make sure to leave plenty of room between the cookies, as they spread.
- Sprinkle each cookie with a little granulated sugar, if desired, and bake until puffy and cracked, 12 to 14 minutes. Leave to cool for at least 15 minutes on the baking sheet – they will be very soft – and then transfer to a rack to finish cooling.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Recipe Testers’ Reviews
How can anyone resist the title of this recipe, a true mash up of brownies and cookies. I love them both and this recipe was a perfect treat. The most time consuming part of this recipe is chopping chocolate but if you do that the night before, putting the recipe together becomes a pretty simple task.
I got 16 cookies and used a small scoop to keep them consistent in size. I used sanding sugar for the top but I think that flakey salt would have been a great topping. We froze a few and detected little difference between those and the freshly baked cookies.
Though we didn’t sandwich them around ice cream as the author suggested, we did serve them broken up with ice cream and they were a perfect treat. of course there was nothing wrong with eating them straight up with a good cup of coffee.
Like ants, the path to our cookie jar is a tune I hear multiple times a day. So much so, I have had to put a cookie jar in the office for my cookie monster! When the jars are empty the call for more is always welcomed and these cracked brownie cookies will be a great addition to the troops! Fast to put together, fast to bake, and especially yummy to eat. They’re very pretty and would make an excellent after dinner dessert made into ice cream sandwiches or as a gift to a new mom, to say sorry, or your best friend who just loves chocolate.
Whatever the occasion, these may sound challenging, but don’t let that stop you! Read the recipe a few times, prepare everything before starting and set a timer and don’t panic about not getting perfect round cookies on your pans.
The oven does all the work for you and most importantly, make sure you give them space. They will spread and they need a good amount of time to cool in their pans, so just let them do their thing and make sure you have enough pans to accommodate all the batter prior to baking.
As the aroma of chocolate cookies wafted from the kitchen into the living room, my husband appeared and hovered over the cookies on the cooling rack. “These cookies smell good,” said he. “You can taste one,” said I. So, the man of the house, who doesn’t typically like chocolate ate the cookie and pronounced it really good! I think that says it all.
My batch yielded 2 1/2 dozen using a very heaping tablespoon per cookie. As the chocolate cookie dough cooled and the chocolate stiffened, I found them easier to portion and the cookies didn’t spread as much during baking. Ten minutes seemed to be the perfect baking time for my oven. I sprinkled the suggested granulated sugar on just the first two trays. It made little visual difference and the cookies are quite sweet anyway, so I didn’t see the need for more sugar. Stirring chopped pecans or walnuts into the cookie dough would just make them more divine.
After making this recipe, which I was able to complete in under 1 hour, I was in love!! I love fast recipes, and this one produced outstanding results. Unlike my normal holiday baking, I followed the mis-en-place rule to make this go quickly.
I used a 2 tablespoon scoop for my cookies and measured out 12 scoops between two pans. I went back and put a partial scoop on top of the original scoops, so each cookie was 3 to 4 tablespoons of batter. I recommend doing this method as my cookies were thicker than the photo, and honestly, looked a little more substantial. I baked the given time, and took the topmost cookie sheet out, moved the lower sheet to the top, and let it bake for another minute. Then both were done! They were puffy and domed, with large cracks in the surface. They did deflate slightly during the cooling time.
I couldn’t help but to dig into one of the ‘uglier’ cookies right out of the oven. The smell was amazing, although I might add some vanilla next time. Cinnamon might be a nice addition also. They are indeed VERY fragile out of the oven, but tasty and delicate. After the 15 minute cooling time, they were still a bit fragile, so I decided to leave them on the pans to cool completely, lest the moving ruin them or cause them to deflate more.
