Thousand-Layer Chocolate Chunk Cookies

According to King Arthur Flour, today is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, so it's the perfect day to be posting these thousand-layer chocolate chunk cookies. The appearance of these delectably-named cookies in my kitchen (and now on my blog) was actually motivated by a recent layover Caleb and I had in Chicago.

A few years ago now, I drove down to DC to visit a college friend, and she took me out for brunch in a glitzy newly-constructed "neighborhood" called Pike & Rose outside Rockville. Nothing so extraordinary about that, except the name of the restaurant was Summer House Santa Monica, which struck me as odd because A) there's no Summer House Santa Monica in Santa Monica and B) it was early December and quite chilly in DC. When we walked inside, we were greeted by one of the most eye-catching and drool-inspiring bakery cases I've ever seen, including a candied-bacon chocolate chunk cookie that I decided to order "just to know if it tasted okay". It was incredible; everything we ate there was.

So, fast forward to our trip to Houghton this summer. Summer House Santa Monica now has multiple locations (in Maryland and Illinois), including a storefront at the front of ORD Terminal F. We landed around 6:45am and I hustled Caleb across ORD to SHSM for breakfast and plane cookies. He ordered the regular chocolate chip cookie, I ordered the sea salt chocolate chip cookie. Neither of our cookies lasted long enough to be eaten on our prop-jet flight.... so while we waited and reminisced about how delicious the cookies were, I asked google how Summer House Santa Monica makes chocolate chip cookies with such a beautiful layering of cookie dough and chocolate shards.

It seemed clear the perfect layers could only be achieved by rolling dough and thin pieces of chocolate together, rather than the traditional (and easy) dump-and-stir style. There weren't very many example recipes, the top two seemed to be one from Martha Stewart and one from Leite's Culinaria, which was basically identical to the Martha Stewart recipe. I started there, but then I found the "egg yolk chocolate chip cookie" recipe in the Violet Bakery cookbook and I decided to use Claire's recipe (plus an extra egg yolk) coupled with the MS/LC roll-out method because I trust Claire more than Martha.

It took a few trays to get the  thickness and the timing down, both the pre-bake chill time as well as the actual bake time, but I'm reasonably happy with this first attempt at a copycat Summer House sea salt chocolate chip cookie. It's not a perfect reproduction, Caleb is very emphatic about this, but I still wound up with a delicious cookie.

It's imperative that you use high-quality, flavorful chocolate here. Trader Joe's pound plus chocolate is not really going to cut it (I know because I tried).

The bake time of 11 minutes 25 seconds is quite specific. They go from underdone at 11 minutes to overcooked at 12 minutes and I've found 11 minutes 25 seconds to be exactly perfect in my oven. Your oven might behave a little differently, what you're looking for are golden edges and middles that look a little gooey and underbaked still. The middles will firm up as the cookies cool, so you'll get that perfect balance of crispy edges and soft middles.

Thousand-Layer Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Copycat Summer House Santa Monica sea salt chocolate chip cookies. These are definitely worth the extra effort (and mess) of rolling out the dough.

Print Pin Rate

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: British

Keyword: Egg yolk cookies, Summer House Santa Monica sea salt chocolate chip cookie, Violet Bakery

Prep Time: 35 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 11 minutes minutes

Resting time: 1 day day

Total Time: 1 day day 46 minutes minutes

Servings: 21 cookies

Ingredients

• 2 ⅓ cups (325 grams) all-purpose flour
• ¾ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon (5 grams) kosher salt*
• 1 cup plus 1 tablespoon (250 grams) unsalted butter at room temperature
• 1 cup (200 grams) light brown sugar not packed
• ½ cup (100 grams) granulated sugar
• 4 large egg yolks at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 250 grams (1 ½ cups; 9 ounces) bittersweet chocolate
• optional: 1 large egg yolk lightly beaten, for brushing
• ¼ teaspoon fleur de sel for sprinkling

Instructions

• In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. You want all that salt to be well incorporated!
  
• Using a stand mixer or handheld mixer, beat the butter and sugars together for 1-2 minutes. You are NOT looking for light and fluffy here, you want to combine the butter and sugars only.
  
• Beat in the egg yolks, 2 at a time, followed by the vanilla. 


• With the mixer on low speed, beat the dry ingredients into the butter mixture until not quite combined. Stop and scrape down the bowl, then give the dough a final stir with the mixer to combine. The dough will be a bit crumbly and quite sticky.
  
• Divide the dough into 3 equal portions. Place each portion on a large piece of plastic wrap or parchment paper and pat it out into a 4-by-6-inch rectangle. Wrap each rectangle separately and refrigerate until chilled, about 30 minutes. This will set the butter and make the dough easier to work with when forming the cookies.
  
• While the cookie dough chills, chop the chocolate into thin shards using a sharp knife and a large cutting board (chopping chocolate on a little board makes a huge mess).
  
• Unwrap one of the chilled dough portions, place it on a parchment paper-covered work surface, and evenly sprinkle the dough with half the chopped chocolate. Top with another unwrapped portion of dough, and again, evenly sprinkle the surface with the remaining chocolate. You should have a towering stack of dough and chocolate. Some chocolate will likely spill out, just poke those chunks back into the tower.
  
• Cover the top of the dough with another piece of parchment paper, then use a large rolling pin to gently roll the tower of dough into a rough rectangle about ¾ inches thick, again tucking any wayward chocolate chunks back into place.
• Using a 2.5-inch round cutter (or a thin-rimmed glass), cut out as many rounds of dough as you can (it should be about 10-12 rounds). Place the cut rounds upside down in a single layer (or parchment-separated double layer) on a parchment-lined baking sheet that fits into your freezer (or some other freezer-safe container).
  
• Gently gather the dough scraps together, pat them together lightly, roll out to the same thickness, and cut out as many cookies as you can. You will likely need to do this another time or two.
  
• Freeze the formed cookies for at least 24 hours before baking, or up to two months (in a freezer-safe container).
  
• When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 355 F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper and place the cookies on the lined sheet with about 3 inches of room between each round. Do not crowd your pan - these spread quite a lot!
  
• Brush the tops lightly with a little of the beaten egg yolk (if using), being sure that you brush in both directions so you don't wind up with any ugly drips. Lightly sprinkle the tops of each cookie with a little of the fleur de sel. Do not skip this - you need to add what seems like a lot of salt for the chocolate to really pop.
  
• Bake the cookies for 11 minutes 25 seconds. These go from perfectly done to overdone very quickly, so use the light on your oven and start watching them after about 10 minutes.
  

Notes

*Please note that the brand of kosher salt you use matters here. Morton's kosher salt is coarser and therefore less salt (by weight) will fit in a teaspoon measurement when compared to Diamond Crystal kosher salt. Add salt by weight if you can.

Be aware that if you don't like the sweet-salty pairing, you probably will find these cookies to be a little too salty for you. You can drop the kosher salt added to the dough to only ½ teaspoon and see how you like these, but if you don't use enough salt, the chocolate won't pop.