Almost anything goes with these thrifty and delicious cookies
I
often eat a bag of salty crisps at the same time as a chewy chocolate bar, alternating bite for bite between the two, because the extreme contrast of salt from the chips and the sweetness of the chocolate fire off each other and create an endorphin rush. The same goes for these cookies, adapted from a recipe by Christina Tosi at New York’s legendary Milk Bar.
Christina Tosi writes in Gourmet Traveller Australia how she first learned to make these cookies at a conference centre on Star Island, New England, where they’d bake them each week with a hodge-podge of different ingredients. Being on an island, they didn’t always have access to what they wanted, so they had to come up with a new recipe every week using whatever they had. In the spirit of the recipe’s origins, I’ve adapted Tosi’s recipe for the UK, and made it flexible, so you can raid your own store-cupboards and adapt and invent your own version from it.
The two main revelations I had when devising this recipe (both of which I’d highly recommend you include) are, first, use fresh coffee grounds, because they impart an incredible depth of flavour without overpowering the cookie. And, second, the addition of salty snacks (salted crisps, pretzels and/or peanuts, for example) is totally delicious in combination with the sweets. You can also try adding other ingredients such as cereal, tortilla chips or roasted fava beans.
