Black Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies

Salt and cookies?  Yup!  Who doesn't love that sweet and savory combo?  Much like a chocolate covered pretzel, this is simply a fancy sounding rendition of the plain old, and yet so yummy, classic chocolate chip cookie!

I was craving that good old dunkable deliciousness that is a chocolate chip cookie, when I thought to find a purpose for the Hawaiian black salt I've had for nearly 2 years now.  I've used some in the past, but if you've never used or tasted Hawaiian black salt before, there are two things to know: (1) it's extremely intensely salty, therefore very little goes a looooong way, and (2) it tends to impart its color on anything you may season it with from the volcanic ash and carbon, and why would you simply use it in a recipe when there's regular salt for that, instead of on the finished product as a seasoning salt.

Anyway, I decided to bake chocolate chip cookies to satisfy the craving and also experimented at the same time by very lightly sprinkling some Hawaiian black salt on top of each cookie.  ***Remember - a little goes a very long way!  

I'm really glad I tried this.  My work colleagues thought this salt addition was absolutely fabulous, and I tried a new chocolate chip cookie recipe that isn't the one from the back of the Tollhouse bag.  Instead, I just tried a quick search for chocolate chip cookie recipe and used the first one I found.  Indeed, the AllRecipes.com Best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe turned out to be rather superior to the classic Tollhouse recipe.  This recipe has a bit more sugar and flour, and also provides a good tip for adding the baking soda:  dissolve in 2 teaspoons of hot water.  The cookies were perfectly crisp on the edges and chewy in the middle.  I did not add the salt or the walnuts:

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 2 teaspoons hot water
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
2. Cream together the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then stir in the vanilla. Dissolve baking soda in hot water. Add to batter along with salt. Stir in flour, chocolate chips, and nuts. Drop by large spoonfuls onto ungreased pans.
3. Bake for about 10 minutes in the preheated oven, or until edges are nicely browned.

Oh, and by the way, they also make EXCELLENT salt-caramel ice cream cookie sandwiches!!!