Chocolate Chip, Pecan & Sea Salt Cookies Recipe

Pecans and sea salt are two of my favorite foods, and dessert is my favorite meal. So naturally I figured I should try and combine all three of them into an original recipe. 

Chocolate chip cookies remind me of my childhood, and their simplicity makes them the perfect backdrop for unusual flavor combinations. The subtle combination of salt in chocolate chip cookie recipes highlights the brown sugar and the chocolate, so I knew that replacing Kosher salt with flaked sea salt would amplify the delicious salty/sweet dynamic. Pecans give the cookies a nice crunch and another added salty element.

I recommend eating these cookies hot out of the oven, because there is nothing better than biting into a warm cookie oozing with melted chocolate (even if it burns your tongue and the roof of your mouth). This recipe yields about 18-20 delicious, salty sweet parcels of joy.

½ cup room temperature butter (1 stick—I use sweet cream unsalted butter)

¾ cup packed light brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

1 tbsp vanilla extract

2 eggs (at room temperature)

1 tsp baking soda

2 cups flour

1 cup chopped pecans

1 cup dark chocolate chips

1 heaping tbsp coarse sea salt (The amount of salt you add is really a matter of preference—I prefer a little bit over 1 tbsp. You can add more or less based on your palette and preferences)

Preheat your oven to 350. Begin by creaming together room temperature butter and your two sugars. Then, add your vanilla into the mixture, followed by the two eggs. Mix together thoroughly until the yolks are completely incorporated. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking soda and sea salt. Add half of the flour mixture into the butter mixture and stir together. Add the other half and whisk it all together. Once combined, add the pecans and chocolate chips.

Grease or spray your cookie sheet or tray. Spoon your dough onto the sheet in heaping tablespoons. Make sure you leave an inch and a half to two inches between each cookie so they don’t turn into one big glob in the oven. Bake the cookies for about 15 minutes at 350. Use the 15 minutes as a guideline, because each oven cooks differently. Check on the cookies every five minutes, and if the edges begin to brown, they’re all done. Take the cookies out and let them cool for about ten minutes, and they’ll be ready to eat (or just eat them hot out of the oven like I do).