Joining the Craze – Alison Roman’s Salted Butter and Chocolate Chunk Shortbread

For those who are not heavy consumers of food-related social media, Alison Roman's new book Dining In is THE new food sensation. 

To tell you the truth, I'm not quite sure why (the problem with social media is that I look at the pictures and read, you know, 140-characters), but I saw enough posts of Roman's Salted Butter and Chocolate Chunk Shortbread Cookies that I knew I had to try them.

Wowsa.  I even messed these up when I prepared them, but they were still great – rich chocolate flavor, great savory tingles on your tongue from the salt, and the perfect amount of crumble.

I messed these up by omitting the salted butter, and instead of following the recipe instruction to add 3/4 tsp. kosher salt to the flour instead, I forgot to add salt until the dough was already together.  Well, no harm, no foul as when I added the salt in late, it seemed to still result in a strong cookie.

Like all shortbread cookies, you prepare the dough, roll it into a log, and then chill the log before baking.

With this recipe though, before you cut the cookies for baking, you roll the dough log in demerara sugar to get crispy, sweeter edges.  The recipe calls for bathing the dough in egg wash before rolling in demerara, but I rolled sans egg wash without any issues.

Bake and enjoy!