I’ve officially been a mom for over 3 months. Time flies when you’re having fun, and it especially flies when you’re sleep deprived and love-drunk on a tiny little human. Motherhood is crazy that way.
Right at the 3 month mark, I felt a distinct change. I started to feel normal again. The baby started sleeping a night (for more than a couple of hours at a time!). I wasn’t a pro at motherhood, by any means, but I felt like I was getting the hang of things. And that’s precisely when disaster struck: my computer died. My hard drive failed and the data was deemed unrecoverable. Thankfully, I had a lot saved to cloud storage and have hard copies of some of my important documents and photos. It certainly could have been a lot worse. But, still. My computer died. It wasn’t fun.
Then, in the midst of dealing with the fallout from my computer dying, the baby got her first cold. I know, I know. It’s just a cold. It shouldn’t be a big deal, but somehow it is? They’re just so little and tiny and helpless and it’s hard to see them feel crummy. And, when the baby feels crummy she doesn’t sleep well (and when the baby doesn’t sleep well, nobody sleeps well). So, that wasn’t fun either.
I could tell you more about my rotten week, but it would probably bore you. You know how it is. Sometimes life is exhausting and unpredictable, and you just have to go with it. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. And that, my friends, is exactly how I’ll segue way into talking about this cookie recipe. (Like how I did that?!?)
Truth be told, I had a lot of recipes and ideas to share with you all. And then my computer died, and a lot of those recipes/photos/etc died with it. So, I went back to the drawing board and I found myself wanting to make something simple, classic, and comforting. So I made a big ole batch of dark chocolate chunk cookies. These cookies are nothing new or exciting, but they were exactly what I needed. They’re rich and chewy, speckled with dark chocolate, sea salt, and thyme. I can say with all honesty that these are the best cookies I have ever made.
One of these days, I’ll get back to blogging regularly. I’ll (hopefully) post inspiring seasonal recipes and drool-worthy photos. I’ll find my rhythm and I’ll find the time. Until then, please enjoy this chocolate chip cookie recipe.
DARK CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIES WITH SEA SALT + THYME
Recipe inspired by Baking Bird
Ingredients:
2 sticks salted butter, softened
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2/3 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 large eggs
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
12 ounces (or more!) of quality dark chocolate*, roughly chopped
Optional: flake sea salt, for sprinkling atop the cookies
*I used a mixture of random dark chocolate bars I had in the pantry, but most of the chocolate was from local chocolate purveyor, Woodblock Chocolate.
Method:
Preheat oven to 350 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment or a Silpat.
In a large bowl (or the base of a stand mixer), mix together the butter and sugars until fluffy. Mix in the eggs and vanilla until combined.
In another bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, and thyme. Stir the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients, mix until combined. Fold in the dark chocolate chunks.
Spoon the dough into evenly sized balls (about 1 tablespoon each), and place 2″ apart on the prepared baking sheet. Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until golden brown.
Remove from the oven and cool cookies on a wire rack. Top with flake sea salt, if desired.