Salted Brownie Cookies

Salted Brownie Cookies bring two desserts into one delicious chocolatey treat! With a shiny, crackly outside that's topped with semi-sweet chocolate chips and sea salt flakes, these decadent fudgy cookies will satisfy any chocolate lover's sweet tooth!

Chocolate Brownie Cookie Ingredients

Here's what you'll need to make these rich and fudgy salted brownie cookies!

• All-Purpose Flour. Keep it simple and use your favorite brand of flour. I didn't test this with any other kind.
• Baking Powder and Salt. Your typical players for this type of cookie recipe.
• Eggs. You'll need 2 large eggs and 1 large egg yolk, preferably at room temperature. Refrigerate the leftover egg whites from the 3rd egg to add your scrambled eggs for breakfast the next morning.
• Sugar. Good, old-fashioned granulated sugar is needed.
• Vegetable Oil. Just a tablespoon is needed. I didn't try this with canola or coconut, but I imagine they would work just as well.
• Vanilla Extract. Pure over imitation is what I prefer, but go with what you have on hand!
• Unsalted Butter. This gets melted into the chocolate chips, so no need for this to be at room temperature.
• Chocolate Chips. Semi-sweet is best and any brand you fancy. You'll need 1 cup, but have some extra on hand if you want to top the cookies with a few more.
• Cocoa Powder. Unsweetened, please. Note, I did not test this recipe with dark cocoa, black cocoa, or dutch processed cocoa.
• Espresso Powder. Totally optional ingredient, but does give the chocolate a really nice boost in flavor.
• Sea Salt Flakes. A nice topping that adds a touch of salty to all that chocolatey goodness. Of course, it's optional, though if you'd rather skip it or don't have it readily available.

Tips for Making the Best Salted Brownie Crinkle Cookies

Prep all of your ingredients. If you remember any of my tips, pleeeeaase let it be this one! Measure everything out and then start making the batter. Once you mix up your batter, you immediately want to get them scooped onto the baking sheet and into the oven.

This includes prepping the baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone mats and preheating your oven! Do it all before starting.

Melting the chocolate. Adding on to the above tip, I like to have my chocolate chips and butter in the saucepan on the stovetop, ready to go. When I start mixing the wet ingredients together using my stand mixer, I then begin to melt the chocolate and butter together until it's nice and smooth. This takes just 2-3 minutes over medium heat.

And one more helpful tip here—have your unsweetened cocoa powder and espresso powder off to the side of your stovetop. You can then immediately stir it into the melted chocolate and butter mixture once you've removed it from the heat.

Add the melted chocolate. The melted chocolate can immediately go into the wet ingredients mixture. No need to let it cool.

Mix until just combined. If you've been here a while, you have probably heard me say this a few times! But it really is important!

Once you add the whisked dry ingredients to your brownie cookie batter, mix until just combined. Meaning just until the flour disappears into the batter.

You can use your hand or stand mixer when adding your dry ingredients or you can simply fold it in with a spatula. The latter option can definitely help prevent overmixing.

Work quickly. Basically, it comes down to this—the quicker you can make these salted brownie cookies and get them in the oven, the better the cookie!

Use a cookie scoop. 2 spoons are cool to use as well, but a cookie scoop just speeds up the process a little bit more (IMHO) and keeps your cookies about the same shape and size. I used my 1 ½ tablespoon-size cookie scoop which gave me 24 cookies.

Bake for 8-10 minutes at 350ºF. My brownie crinkle cookies came out perfectly at the 8-minute mark. The tops of your cookies should be somewhat shiny with crackly tops with a fudgy center.

Add some extra chocolate chips. For a little extra chocolate—because who doesn't love that—add a few (I'm talking 3-4) chocolate chips after you've removed the cookies from the oven. Add them almost immediately after taking them out of the oven.

How Do You Make Perfectly Round Cookies?

The best tip for uniform, round cookies—which comes from the brilliant Stella Parks of Brave Tart—can be achieved by following these 3 easy steps:

1. Immediately after your brownie cookies are done, remove them from the oven, but keep them on the hot baking sheet.
2. Take a circle or round-shaped cookie cutter that is slightly bigger place the cookie within the cookie cutter. You can also use a mug or small bowl, just as long as it's bigger than the cookie itself. The only downside to the mug or bowl is you can't see the cookie.
3. In a circular motion, move the cookie cutter around the cookie until it forms a perfect circle. This usually takes me about 5-8 seconds.

Another helpful tip—use an oven mitt as you hold the baking sheet with whatever hand you won't be using for the cookie cutter. Because, you know, that baking sheet just came out of the oven. It's going to be H-O-T, HOT!