Today is National Junk Food Day, and one of my favorite junk foods is cookie dough!! Chocolate chip cookie dough. It probably my greatest weaknesses in life. Like if you owe me money, don’t pay me back with money. Just pay me with cookie dough :)
These are the gourmet version of cookie dough bites as they have browned butter, vanilla bean seeds and sea salt. They are decadent, divine, luscious, perfect, dreamy, worth about as much as diamonds and every other best word I can think of to describe something that is insanely delicious. Yes it should make about 28 truffles but likely you’ll get half that many or less because you’ll eat that much dough before you even have time to shape them. And yes of course it is completely edible as it contains no eggs and has instead been replaced with cream (ahh how I love cream) and a splash of milk.
Ingredients
10 Tbsp salted butter, diced
seeds 1/2 large vanilla bean
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
2 Tbsp heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 tsp fine sea salt*
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 - 2 Tbsp milk
1/2 cup mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
12 oz chocolate coating or chocolate, melted or 1/3 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or chopped chocolate (if drizzling rather than dipping. I used Ghirardelli chocolate coating)
coarse sea salt, for garnish**
Directions
Brown butter along with vanilla bean seeds in a small saucepan over medium heat (make sure to brown it long enough). Remove from heat and pour brown butter and seeds, scrapping out any excess, into a heat proof 1 quart storage container. Cover with lid and freeze 30 minutes, or until cool. Once cool pour browned butter and vanilla bean seeds, scrapping out excess, into the bowl of an electric stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment. Add light-brown sugar, cream, vanilla and salt and whip mixture on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Stir in flour and 1 Tbsp milk and blend until combined. Mix in chocolate chips. Add additional milk 1/2 Tbsp at a time as needed to create a soft dough that will roll into a ball, yet that is firm enough to hold it's shape. Scoop dough out about 1 Tbsp at a time and shape into a balls. Dip in melted chocolate and sprinkle very lightly with coarse sea salt (a little goes a long way) before chocolate sets (or alternately pour the 1/3 cup chocolate that has been melted into a Ziploc bag or piping bag, cut tip and drizzle over tops and sprinkle with salt) then refrigerate to set chocolate. Store in an airtight container in refrigerator.
*I just placed 1/4 tsp coarse sea salt in a ziploc bag and crushed it with the flat side of a meat mallet until finely crushed. Regular table salt would work fine though too.
**I've found the chunks are too large in the coarse sea salt I've been buying lately so I crush those down slightly as well.
Photo and recipe courtesy of: http://www.cookingclassy.com/2013/03/salted-browned-butter-chocolate-chip-cookie-dough-truffles/
