Chocolate Chip Cookie Brittle

Today’s recipe share is from Shauna Sever’s wonderful book ‘Real Sweet’.  This simple recipe uses turbinado sugar to give the brittle some brown sugar flavour but keeps the cookie nice and crisp.  If you swapped in granulated sugar you defeat the purpose of the ‘brittle’ as the cookie wouldn’t have the same texture.

The recipe calls for bittersweet chocolate chips but I used a combo of bittersweet and semi-sweet in my batch and I liked the extra hit of sweet…but I’m sure no one is surprised by my sweeter preference.

I definitely should have taken a few more minutes and pressed by dough a little thinner per Shauna’s instructions but patience is sometimes not my virtue!  Flattening the dough to cover the pan is probably the most difficult part of this simple but addictive recipe.

I will be baking up more recipes from this book which features all types of sweeteners, such as honey, maple syrup, frozen unsweetened apple juice, etc.  so don’t forget to subscribe to sweetenuf.ca or follow on Instagram (sweet_enuf) to see what’s baking up!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Brittle

Preheat oven to 350F.  Parchment line a 12 x 17-inch baking sheet.

Ingredients:

14 tablespoons (7 ounces) unsalted butter, cut into tablespoons

1 cup turbinado sugar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

1 teaspoon fine salt

2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 cup finely chopped pecans or walnuts

3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate

Method:

In a large saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and sugar together until melted BUT NOT boiling.  Remove from stove and whisk together until the butter is completely melted.  Cool for 5 minutes.  Whisk again continuously for 1 minute, or until mixture is thickened and smooth and no longer appears separated.  Whisk in the vanilla and salt. Stir in the flour until well incorporated (no white streaks of flour remain and no flour on bottom or sides of saucepan).  Stir in 1/2 of the nuts.

Turn dough out onto prepared pan and pat it very thin.  (It helps to break the dough up into mounds and place all over sheet pan and then work to pat it all together.)  Just keep working to spread dough over all of cookie sheet.  When complete lightly smooth with an offset spatula to even it all out.

Sprinkle with the chocolate chips and the remaining nuts and press then lightly into the dough with your hands.

Bake for about 20-25 minutes, until lightly golden brown and slightly firm to the touch.  Rotate pans every 7-8 minutes for even baking.  Remove from oven and let cool for about 5 minutes then using another parcment lined sheet FLIP the brittle onto it and remove the parchment.  Carefully invert again onto a cooling rack to firm up.

Cool completely and break into pieces.  Store in an airtight container.  This will keep for about 5 days but I don’t think it will hang around for that long!