Gooey Chocolate Cookies
Light, crinkly chocolate cookies with origins in kladdkaka, a sweedish sticky cake. Named kladdkakekakor after their cake namesake,
Two Christmases ago, the dessert I made for our dinner gathering was Kladdkaka, a Swedish Chocolate Cake that translates roughly to sticky or gooey cake. Call Me Cupcake has a great flourless version of it. I had topped mine with homemade honey ice cream, chocolate sauce and sugared cranberries – it was a hit.
I made the cake a few more times after that – it was such a simple, quick bake and the topping possibilities are endless. I forgot about it for a year or so, save the occasional fond mention of that Christmas. Then a few weeks back I stumbled upon something called Kladdkakekakor, which sounded and read a lot like the cake I knew! A google search brought up a ton of very chocolatey cookies, and sure enough, it appears this is the cookie version of Kladdkaka. They seem to translate to “scratch cake cookies” and gooey is exactly how I would describe them.
Recipe Origins
I found one recipe in particular that I liked by Shirin Selfelt. It was simple, direct and the resulting bake looked exactly like what I’d want the cookies to be. The first time I published the recipe I had changed just a handful of things from hers: added chocolate chips, modified the flavorings etc. Over the years I’ve started making them a bit differently – I maintain the original proportions of sugar/egg/chocolate/flour but I use a different leavening, I allow them to firm up a bit, and streamlined the mixing method.
The cookies are lighter than brownie cookies, not overly chocolatey (there’s no cocoa!) and they have these gorgeous crinkles all over. When they first come out of the oven they’ve got a crispy shell all over which gives away to a gooey middle (very like their cake namesake). As they cool they turn into a denser, chewy kinda fudgy cookie – minus the intense taste.
Note: Shirin’s website, where I got the original recipe from, looks to be down but I see copies of her original recipe on facebook and elsewhere. Here’s another source for her work (but no kladkaka cookies!).
Recipe Ingredients
Salted butter: You can substitute with unsalted if that’s all you have and add 1/2 tsp fine sea salt to the cookie dough.
Chocolate: Don’t use chocolate chips, instead chop up a good quality chocolate bar. Anything that’s at least 60% cocoa solids and tastes good to eat!
Eggs: Large, this recipe cannot be made egg free.
Sugar: Brown, light or dark is fine. You might be tempted to reduce the sugar but bear in mind it’ll mess with the structure and texture of the cookies.
Flour: All purpose flour, if you wanted to make these gluten-free use a 1 to 1 flour substitute.
Flaked sea salt: To sprinkle on top of the cookies pre-bake. This adds a lovely pop of flavor to the cookie.
Recipe Notes
Add ins or stuffings: Occasionally I’ll add chocolate chips to the cookie, just for pops of pure chocolate. These cookies are also great for stuffing, I’d stuff them with a chunk of white or caramelized white chocolate.
Don’t bake these cookies right away: the butter and chocolate which are melted to make the dough, need to come up to room temperature and firm up the dough. The dough is very very soft but after about 20 minutes, it becomes firm enough to scoop (and shape).
Gooey Chocolate Cookies Recipe (Kladdkakekakor)
Gooey Chocolate Cookies
Ingredients
- 225 g dark chocolate chopped
- 60 g or 1/4 cup salted butter softened
- 2 eggs
- 400g or 2 cups dark brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 190g or 1 ½ cups all purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ⅓ cup chopped chocolate optional
- Flaked sea salt
Method
- In the microwave, melt the chocolate and butter.
- Add the eggs, sugar, salt, vanilla and baking soda and beat with a hand mixer.
- Add flour and baking powder, beat until just combined.
- Fold in the chopped chocolate.
- Set the dough to rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
- Drop cookies in 1.5 tablespoons onto sheet, sprinkle sea salt over them and bake for 10-12 minutes.
Notes
For ‘red velvet’ variation: add 1 tablespoon dutch process cocoa, as much red food coloring as you’d like, and omit the chopped chocolate.
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Made these yesterday and they were amazing! Highly recommend! I only had raw sugar so went with that and they still turned out delicious, I made sure to beat the eggs and sugar really really well.
Wish ingredients were all metric though, so much easier. ☺️
Thin, chewy and crispy goodness. I used a combination of milk chocolate, dark chocolate and semi-sweet chocolate chips for melting (only because I didn’t have enough dark chocolate lol) and used just dark chocolate as the chopped mix-in. So good!
Another great cookie recipe! One thing is that in the ingredients list baking soda is listed but in step 4 it says baking powder. I was not sure which one to use. I used baking soda and my cookies came out good so I think that was the right decision.
I made this two nights ago and they were spectacular! Crispy on the outside while pillowy soft and fudgy in the center–like a perfect corner brownie in every bite.
I had Nestle semisweet chocolate chips on hand, so that’s what I used for melting down into the batter and for the extra “chopped” bits. Microwaved the chips and butter in 30 second increments rather than breaking out the double boiler, then incorporated everything in my kitchenaid mixer–worked great.
This recipe made exactly 36 balls for me, ~1.5″. I would recommend letting the dough thaw a bit if you freeze (I baked 6 in my countertop Breville and froze the rest), as they won’t spread out much (at least that’s my experience, knowing that chocolate chips spread less than chocolate bars). I only had light brown sugar instead of dark brown sugar, so I added a teaspoon of molasses to compensate.
Thank you Sam! Been following you on IG for a couple years now and made your flourless red velvet cake, was excited to try this brownie cookie recipe 🙂