Olive Oil Chocolate Chunk Cookies

I am so happy with these Olive Oil Chocolate Chunk Cookies! They turned out much better than expected, and I'm bummed I can't share them with everyone in real life. I came up with the recipe as a way to use up some olive oil that's been accumulating around here -- and maybe as a slightly healthier alternative to butter, but that's a always a dubious claim when talking about cookies. Honestly, these are just good!

Extra Virgin Olive Oil Cookies

The recipe is a variation on an old olive oil cookie recipe that calls with whole wheat flour. It's funny because back when I first made the old recipe I was trying to cover up the olive oil flavor and put an emphasis on light tasting olive oil. With this new recipe, I went for the fullest flavor olive oil I could find, which in this case was the Olio Santo, which is one of my favorites. Because I ended up making the recipe multiple times, I also tested with Costco's Colavita. Both worked perfectly.

Texture and Flavor

The texture is my favorite thing about these cookies. They are very firm, crinkly, pretty, and soft on the inside. Also chewy. What I didn't like about them at first was they lacked flavor -- or at least butter flavor, and were on the sweet side. A few tiny changes fixed that. I added cinnamon (a tip I took from the DoubleTree and Laura Bush cookies), added a ton of toasted walnuts, and more than usual vanilla. I also added three different kinds of chocolate-- Belgian chunks from Aldi (the best of the Aldi baking chocolate, imho), some Guittard disks and Ghirardelli Bittersweets. Mixing chips (or chunks) is a great way to really improve the flavor of any cookie. In this case, their large size was also beneficial since it matched with the large size of hte cookies.

Large Cookie Scoop

I used a large cookie scoop and made these about 2 ½ oz (70 grams) each. The oil makes the dough a little funky, so they don't scoop perfectly clean and you'll be doing some dough-pinching, but using the scoop reminded me just how much I appreciate my cookie scoop. For many years I thought I did not need a cookie scoop because I had a tablespoon. Then at some point I finally gave in and bought a couple of cookie scoops. Now they are all I use for several reasons. Scoops portion dough evenly, but they also imprint tiny abrasions into the dough so that the dough bakes up with crevices and cracks. Or usually. It depends on the recipe, but scooped cookies often have a special look to them. You can especially tell with shortening or peanut butter based doughs. So that's just a side note about scoops. Here's a link to my favorite.

Olive Oil Chocolate Chunk Ingredient Rundown

• Flour -- I've been using King Arthur All-Purpose this week.
• Baking Powder
• Baking Soda
• Salt -- Morton Kosher
• Cinnamon -- Just enough to bump flavor, but not enough to make the cookies taste cinnamon-y.
• Brown Sugar -- Light, but I sometimes slip in a little dark as well. But just light is fine. No need to go out and buy dark brown if you don't have it.
• Granulated Sugar -- Whatever cane sugar is on sale!
• Olive Oil -- Full flavored. I've been using Costco and Olio Santo.
• Coconut Oil -- Unrefined or refined are both fine. You can substitute butter if needed.
• Large Egg -- Room temperature. If it's cold, the chill from the egg will re-solidify the softened coconut oil, so make sure to bring the egg to room temperature.
• Vanilla -- Still using Nielsen Massey this week.
• Dark Chocolate -- Any kind will work, and chunks or large chips (like the Ghirardelli and Guittard) are best here.
• Walnuts -- I made a batch with untoasted and a batch without and thought the toasted version was just a tiny bit better. But untoasted is fine too.

More Recipes

• Whole Wheat Olive Oil Chocolate Chip
• Olive Oil Upside Down Fruit Cake
• Cranberry Chocolate Chunk Cookies (with Olive Oil)
• Greek Olive Oil Cake
• Blueberry Olive Oil Scones

Recipe