Reverse Chocolate Chip Cookie (aka the White Chocolate Chip Chocolate Cookie)

This Reverse Chocolate Chip Cookie are a white chocolate chip chocolate cookie, an invert version of the classic chocolate chip cookie. Using a pan-banging baking method created by Sarah Kieffer, the edges are crispy and crunchy while the middle is fudgy and soft! (Jump directly to the recipe.)

Even though I fell in love with Sarah Kieffer’s The Vanilla Bean Blog, ages ago and adore her cookbook The Vanilla Bean Baking Book because every single recipe in there rock solid works, I actually hadn’t met Sarah until recently. She recently came into San Francisco briefly for a weekend because her husband was a work trip and we had a marvelous two hours running around my neighborhood grabbing morning buns at Tartine, coffee at Ritual and donuts over at Dynamo Donut right before she and her husband drove off to the airport. We didn’t have much time to hang out but it was enough time for us to bond over our love of butter, sugar and flour and the trials and tribulations of writing a cookbook.

All that said, I resisted making her pan-banging chocolate chip cookie for ages. It’s not that I have anything against her recipe (it’s actually quite brilliant in technique) but I have a serious issue that prevents me from making them. I don’t have any spare freezer space and her recipe requires you to freeze the dough for 15 minutes before baking them.

Now this may seem silly to you, but when I say I have NO freezer space, I really mean it. I actually TAPE my freezer door shut with blue painter’s tape (recently increasing the straps to THREE since two apparently wasn’t enough) because I have so much in my freezer that the door kept on popping open. I have a freezer hoarding problem.

But in a coffee-fueled frenzy of activity a few weeks ago, I finally got around to making stock with turkey carcass and ham bone from last Christmas, the chicken backbones I always save when I roast chickens, and other random odd and ends that I save up for stock (the green parts of leeks that every recipe tells you to discard goes into a freezer bag for this exact reason). Because of the various bones that went into the stock, I called it my Old McDonald stock and it made the apartment smell amazing as it simmered away all afternoon long.

As an added bonus though, it also cleared out a TON of space in my freezer. So much so that I was able to reduce blue painter’s tape down to just one strap (woo hoo!). AND that meant I had enough room for me to freeze a few balls of a dough at a time – ala Sarah’s famous Pan Banging cookie. Having recently made chocolate chip cookies though, I decided to switch it up a little bit and reverse the cookie dough and make the dough the source of the chocolate. And because I’m one of those folks that actually likes white chocolate (yeah yeah, you can totally tell me that it’s not REAL chocolate, I don’t care, I still like it) I used those in place of the chocolate chunks. And after making these, I think I’m going to have to start cleaning out my freezer more often. Sarah’s a baking genius…but you all probably knew that already.

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4.50 from 2 votes

Reverse Chocolate Chip Cookie (aka the White Chocolate Chip Chocolate Cookie), the Pan-Banging Version

This reverse chocolate chip cookie is a chocolate chip cookie with a chocolate cookie base and tons of white chocolate chunks. I used Sarah Kieffer’s technique to “pan-bang” the cookie mid-baking, several times, to create the crinkles and ridges at the edge of the cookie. This leads to a cookie that is both crispy and crunchy in the edges and fudgy and soft in the middle. Be sure to buy white chocolate chips that use real cocoa butter or buy a white chocolate bar and chop it up. A lot of white chocolate uses vegetable oil and inferior ingredients which don’t melt or taste nearly as good. The flaky salt I used on top is optional but since white chocolate is so sweet, I found the salt balances it out a bit. Feel free to omit it if you don’t like it.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Prep Time 30 minutes minutes

Cook Time 16 minutes minutes

Total Time 46 minutes minutes

Servings 11

Calories 400kcal

Author Irvin

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup brewed and cooled coffee or 1/4 cup water with 1 teaspoon instant coffee
• 6 tablespoons natural cocoa powder, divided 40 g
• 1 cup unsalted butter at room temperature 2 sticks or 225 g
• 1 1/2 cups white granulated sugar 300 g
• 1/4 cup packed dark brown sugar 55 g
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour 245 g
• 6 ounces chopped white chocolate or white chocolate chips
• Maldon sea salt or other flaky sea salt (optional but recommended)

Instructions

• Combine the coffee and 4 tablespoons of the cocoa powder in a glass measuring cup and stir to form a paste.
  
• Place the butter, both sugars, salt, baking soda and vanilla extract in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix together until the butter is creamy and clings to the side of the bowl. Scrape down the sides and mix in the chocolate coffee paste and egg until incorporated and consistent in color.
  
• Add the flour and the remaining 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. Slowly mix together until a soft dough forms. Add the white chocolate, reserving a few pieces to garnish on top, and slowly mix it into the dough (you can do this by hand with a wooden spoon if you want).
  
• Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line three or four baking sheets with aluminum foil, with the dull side of the foil up. Measure out three or four balls of dough about 100 g each (3 1/2 ounces or heaping 1/3 cup). The balls should be somewhere between a golf ball and a baseball. Place the balls on one of the baking sheet, as far apart as possible from each other, then move the baking sheet with the dough to the freezer. Leave in there for 15 minutes. Measure out the remaining balls in the same manner but leave at room temperature.
• Once the cookie dough has chilled, remove from the freezer and place another baking sheet with cookie dough in the freezer. Put a few extra pieces of white chocolate on top of each cookie dough and sprinkle the top with a generous pinch of Maldon sea salt then place the baking sheet in the oven for 10 minutes. 
• Once the 10 minutes is up, open the door of the oven and lift up the baking sheet and gently drop it back on the rack. The cookie dough will have puffed up and then deflated. Set a timer for 2 minutes, and then repeat this process, opening the oven and dropping the baking sheet. Do this a couple more times, each time waiting 2 minutes between dropping the baking sheet. Each time you “deflate” the cookie, you create ridges around the edges of the cookie, that are crisping up. You want to bake the cookie a total of 16 to 18 minutes, where the edges look dry but the middle of the cookie is still soft and puffy looking. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool for 10 minutes in the pan. Then move the cookies from the baking sheet to a wire rack to cool completely.
  
• Repeat with the remaining cookies, rotating one baking sheet at a time from the counter to the freezer to the oven to bake.

Notes

These make large cookies but there’s no way to make the crispy wrinkled edges with a smaller cookie. Just break the cookies in half if you want smaller portions.

Radically adapted and inspired from Sarah Kieffer’s The Vanilla Bean Baking Book

Nutrition

Calories: 400kcal