Chip Chip Cookies - Chocolate Chip Cookies with Sea Salt and Cracked Pepper Potato Chips!

You can't avoid the sweet-salty collision. It's everywhere - in chocolates, caramels, and even baked goods. Today I made Chip Chip cookies, my take on the sweet-salty revolution. This is NOT your grandmother's chocolate chip cookie! It's a chewy cookie with sea salt and cracked pepper potato chips inside and out. I took an old recipe for a not-quite-typical chocolate chip cookie and changed it up even more with the addition of sturdy, kettle-style potato chips.

What sets this recipe apart from the familiar standard is that the dough is not beaten, it's stirred. I based it on the basic cookie my friend Betsy Cogan made for years. Everything is stirred, old-school. Barely melted butter mixed with more brown sugar than white creates a caramel-y texture, and these cookies are perfectly chewy when baked for 10 minutes (in my oven).

You can see the crushed potato chips on top of the cookies
giving a hint as to what's inside! 

Here's the recipe:

CHIP CHIP COOKIES
Makes 3 dozen large (3- to 4-inch) cookies

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Farenheit
If you have parchment paper, line a cookie sheet. (I always use parchment paper - it's worth its weight in gold! Cookies bake evenly, and clean up is much simpler. Won't bake without it!)


Ingredients:

1/2 lb. unsalted butter (2 sticks)
1 cup light brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups kettle-style potato chips or more to taste - I used Saratoga Chips - Sea Salt and Black Pepper

Directions:

In large mixing bowl, place both sugars and vanilla. Stir.

In small saucepan over low heat, melt butter until it's about 3/4 melted. Turn off heat and allow the residual heat to melt the rest of the butter. These keeps the butter from getting too hot.

Pour melted butter into sugar mixture and stir well.

Add eggs to sugar butter mixture, one at a time, stirring well after each addition.

Place flour, baking soda, and salt over top of mixture in bowl. Toss these dry ingredients lightly with a fork to incorporate, and then stir well into butter/sugar/egg mixture.

Stir in chocolate chips and 1 cup of the potato chips that you have broken in coarse pieces over the batter. Mix well. The other 1/2 cup of the potato chips will be crushed with a rolling pin (or however you'd like to crush them) to sprinkle on top of the cookies before they go in the oven.

Using a cookie scoop or a generous tablespoon, drop batter a few inches apart onto lined cookie sheet. You should get 12-15 cookies per pan. Press down a tiny bit to flatten the tops. Sprinkle crushed potato chips on top.

Bake for 10 minutes OR just until edges begin to brown and middles begin to look dry. Don't let them get brown all over or they'll lose their chewiness.

Remove from oven and allow to sit for 5 minutes before moving the cookies to a cooling rack.

And the close-up!
See the potato chips?