The Pump Street Bakery Jamaica 75% Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
This recipe has the same ingredients you will find in most classic chocolate chip cookies; there are no secret additions. There are a few tricks however, which we feel set our cookies apart from the rest. We use only our Jamaica 75% pastilles as the chocolate, broken in half for just the right size chunks of dark, distinctive chocolate. We chill the dough for more than 24 hours before forming it into balls, which allows the moisture from the egg to hydrate the flour, makes the dough firmer and yields a better texture. Then we freeze the balls and bake them from frozen, to encourage a crisp exterior and a tender, chewy centre. Last but not least, we serve our cookies with a hint of warmth left in them, because there is no more perfect moment to enjoy them.
Start with all of your ingredients at room temperature, at least one day before you want to eat the cookies.
Makes 16 cookies.
140g unsalted butter
120g light muscovado sugar
110g golden caster sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tsp (2.5g) vanilla paste
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp Maldon salt, crushed
220g plain flour
225g Jamaica 75% pastilles, broken in half
You will need a large bowl and a handheld mixer or a standing mixer. Place the butter in the bowl and mix until loose and creamy, and then add the sugars. Blend for 3-5 minutes, scraping down a couple of times in the middle, until the sandiness of the sugar is barely remaining and the colour is slightly more pale. At this point, mix in the egg and vanilla slowly, increasing the speed until you have almost uniform texture – but don’t worry if it looks a little curdled.
Combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt in a separate bowl and stir through with a fork. Add into the butter mixture in two halves, mixing briefly and scraping between each addition.
Finally add the chocolate into the dough gently, folding by hand. Chill the dough for a minimum of 24 hours.
Form the dough into 55g balls and freeze on a baking tray. Once the outside is frozen, they can be transferred to a reusable container.
To bake, preheat the oven to 165C (155C for fan ovens) and line your baking tray(s) with greaseproof paper. Place the number of frozen cookie dough balls you want to bake on the trays, spread well apart.
Bake for about 12-14 minutes until the edges are dark and crisp but the middle is only lightly browned and still tender. Allow to cool for 5-10 minutes so that they hold together when taken off the tray. Eat warm.