Are you ready for the weekend? I sure am. The last few weeks have been a dizzying blur of logistics. Tax returns. School applications. Work. Catching up with life and laundry after our blissful vacation. Oof.
Last Friday night the hubby came downstairs and found me cradling a glass of wine in one hand while swirling my other hand in a bowl of chocolate chips, the way one might test bathwater. He raised an eyebrow. “Um…is everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” I insisted. “I’m celebrating the start of the weekend, and all I need is a really big cookie. Really. Big.”
The hubby backed away, nodding slowly. He knows that I stress bake. I mix up a batter of my emotions, pour it into a pan and then let it bake at 350 degrees for the designated time. Then, I do what every stress eater does — I eat my feelings, one chocolate-y sweet bite at a time. It feels so, so good.
This time, the feelings took the form of a giant, ten-inch salted cast iron chocolate chip cookie.
As you know, I’m a big fan of my Lodge cast iron 10-inch skillet (see here and here). I love how it comes pre-seasoned and how, over time, as I’ve cooked more in it, it’s developed a patina that contains the history of the food I’ve made. Plus, it’s affordable. In fact, I love my Lodge cast iron so much that I have a whole Pinterest board of recipes dedicated to it. That’s love, friends.
For this big salted chocolate chip cookie, I based my recipe off of Martha Stewart’s easy recipe for a cast iron chocolate chip cookie. Martha never fails. The biggest difference between her recipe and what I did is that I melted the butter fully in my skillet first, letting the butter brown just a bit to make it all caramel-y. Then I added Bulls Bay Carolina Flake sea salt. I picked up a jar of this sea salt the last time I was in Charleston for the Charleston Wine + Food Festival (click here and here for the posts about my time there), and I’m officially hooked. The flake salt has larger chunks in it than regular kosher salt, and the salt is — I don’t know how to describe it except to say that it is the essence of saltiness. It tastes like the ocean!
After my big cookie finished baking and had cooled just ever so slightly, I cut a wedge and started taking these photos, only to realize that I suddenly had an audience. The hubby stood next to me, shifting his weight from one foot to the other while watching me arrange and rearrange my cookie.
“I have an idea,” he suggested. He always thinks of me, that guy. “How about you cut more slices, and more, and more, to show a progression of the cookie being eaten?”
“But then I’ll have a bunch of cookie wedges sitting all over the kitchen,” I replied. “What will I do with them?”
“Oh, I have some ideas.”
Yeah. As it turns out, we didn’t have that problem. You know, with the extra cookie wedges laying all over the place.
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I’m Ann, a mom / wife / lawyer / certified culinary enthusiast. I share recipes, travel guides and home life tips while living overseas. Currently based in São Paulo, Brazil.
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i am so craving a cookie right now, especially a skillet cookie like this! love anything salted too!
Me too! I loved this big cookie and it’s really easy to make, too!