Recently I attempted some salted espresso chocolate cookies. I brought a batch into the fire station to get some feedback and brighten up the crew’s day. This was my first time using this recipe, which I let my husband choose. I blindly agreed to this, as I love coffee and very much like chocolate. I should have read the full recipe to start. It was much more involved than anticipated. Lots of freezing of things and molding of things, I was not prepared.
The cookies themselves were HUGE! I could only fit 4 cookies on a cookie sheet, and usually I have 6-8. It was eye opening how big you can make one cookie. Now these cookies turned out alright. They were enjoyable. But I did make a mistake.
The recipe called for coffee salt. This is just instant coffee and flaky sea salt mixed together and sprinkled on top. Now silly me attempted to substitute Himalayan salt instead of flaky sea salt. Himalayan salt is hard, not flaky, and strong. I did my best to smash the salt “rocks” in the bag to make smaller pieces and used that. I did not do a good job of breaking it up and some of the cookies turned out WAY too salty. I can see how the salt would make a delightful addition. But the way I made the cookies it did not. Far too strong for me. And unfortunately, far too strong for those I brought them to.
While the crew who got to sample them enjoyed them the consensus was that there was too much salt and not enough coffee. It was a face slap moment. Do not substitute Himalayan salt for flaky sea salt. It is not the same. Not all salts are created equal. It’s unfortunate.
I will attempt to redeem myself and make these cookies again with changes. So check back for that! I’ve made a couple of things since that did NOT disappoint, so that’s good. Everyone has to have failures now and again. It keeps us humble.
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