These Bourbon Honeycomb Chocolate Chunk Cookies are good for what ails you. I am pretty sure I have never had a better chocolate chip cookie in my life
1stick butter4 oz, browned and cooled/chilled so it's a soft solid*** SEE NOTES
6oz3/4 cup, packed dark brown sugar
1ozCloister Honey Bourbon Honey(or any honey)
1teaspoonvanilla paste(or extract)
½teaspoonkosher saltyou can use less, but don't use less than 1/4 teaspoon
1egg at cool room temperature
8ozall purpose flour2 barely scant cups measured by whisking the flour, spooning it in the measures and sweeping off the excess with a straight edge. Do you see why you need a scale?
1teaspoonbaking soda
8oztotal roughly chopped bittersweetsemi-sweet and/or dark milk chocolate
1 ½ozslightly generous 1/2 cup crushed/crumbled Bourbon honeycomb candy (or any honeycomb candy, store bought or homemade)
sea salt for sprinkling(optional but really lovely, smoked salt goes especially well with the Bourbon)
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350F and place racks in the upper and lower thirds of your oven.
If you don't know how to brown butter, I can help. You'll have to do this step ahead because the butter needs time to chill back down in the fridge so it is somewhat firm but not hard.
Combine re-solidified brown butter, dark brown sugar (or light brown sugar and molasses), honey, vanilla and salt in the bowl of your stand mixer. Cream until light and fluffy, scraping bowl as necessary. This will take about 5 minutes.
Lightly beat the egg and add to the mixer. Beat again until light, another 2 minutes or so. Scrape the bowl as necessary.
Whisk the flour and baking soda together and then add to the mixer. Mix on low until flour is mostly mixed in, then increase the speed to medium and mix an additional 30 seconds.
Scrape bowl. This is a fairly stiff batter, so mix in the chopped chocolate and honeycomb by hand. I actually ended up sort of lightly kneading the dough to make sure all the mix-ins were evenly incorporated.
Scoop cookies onto parchment-lined pans. I scaled my dough at roughly 1.5-1.6 oz per cookie since I wanted 18 cookies. If you are feeling very anal, do what I did and weigh your dough. Then divide that weight by the number of cookies you want--12-24. I wanted 18.
Press each mound of dough down just slightly and sprinkle with a small amount of finishing salt of your choice, smoked or otherwise.
If you make 18 cookies like I did, bake for 6 minutes and then switch the pans and bake an additional 5-6 minutes. Baking times will vary slightly depending on how many cookies you decide to make. When done, cookies will be golden brown around the edges and lightly brown and set on the tops.
Remove pans from the oven and slide the parchment onto cooling racks. Don't even attempt to eat one for at least 10-15 minutes. That honeycomb will be molten, and I don't want you to hurt yourself.
Cool completely.
Sit on your couch and eat all the cookies. Or you can store them, tightly sealed at room temperature for up to a week. Because of the honey and molasses in them, they will stay chewy.
Video
Notes
Prep time does not include time to brown and cool the butter or the time to make the honeycomb. You can easily take care of both of these steps a day or two before baking.Here's the recipe for the Bourbon honeycomb candy***You can use whole butter without browning it, but browned butter definitely will give your cookies a deeper flavor.I scaled my dough to make 18 cookies and the nutritionals reflect that. You can make smaller or larger cookies if you want. Just watch the baking time because it will take a couple of minutes, more or less, depending on if you're making larger or smaller cookies.