Salted Egg Yolk Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

This salted egg yolk chocolate chip cookies recipe came about because I literally dreamed about them.

The other night I had a dream about finding warm, freshly-baked salted egg yolk chocolate chip cookies in a shop, and woke up just before I was able to buy one. I could smell them in my dream: warm, caramelised, chocolatey and buttery with the distinct salty tangy fragrance of salted duck egg yolks.

But my disappointment about them not being real was replaced by the determination to make these dream cookies a reality.

To make my salted egg yolk chocolate chip cookies, I use pre-bought frozen (and then thawed) salted duck egg yolks. You can make your own salted duck egg yolks though by separating yolks from the whites, covering them with salt an leaving them for 24 hours before brushing and rinsing the salt off and drying in the oven on a low heat.

I then grate the egg yolks, which at this stage have the texture of cheddar cheese. Stirring them in at the end, the cookies end up having some of the salted egg yolks smoothly incorporated into the dough itself and some solid flecks of unincorporated salted egg yolk scattered throughout the dough for extra flavour.

When I make this kind of cookie, I usually add a little cornflour to help give the cookies a little extra tender chewiness. For these salted egg yolk cookies though, I use custard powder to enhance the egg yolkiness – and custard powder is mostly cornflour anyway, with a few flavourings and colouring.

I also like using an even mix of dark and milk chocolate for the chips, but you can use all dark or milk, or even all white if you like – or mix up all three to come up to about 200g of chocolate in total.

You can also watch me make this on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes about 12 cookies.)

Ingredients:

150g light muscovado sugar
100g caster sugar
115g unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 egg
155g plain flour
2 tsp custard powder
1/2 tsp baking powder
100g milk chocolate, roughly chopped
100g dark chocolate, roughly chopped
6 salted duck egg yolks, grated

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a couple of baking trays with non-stick baking paper.

2. Stir the sugars and butter together until evenly mixed, and stir in the egg until smooth.

3. Add the flour, custard powder and baking powder and stir until well-combined.

4.  Stir in the chopped chocolate and grated salted egg yolks, and shape the dough into small balls (I use a standard ice cream scoop to portion it out evenly).

5. Space the balls out on your prepared baking trays so they're at least 4cm apart. Bake for 8–12 minutes, depending on how thick and chewy or thin and crisp you want them. I baked mine for 10 minutes.

6. Let the cookies cool before serving.

Enjoy, and have fun.