(image: Instagram @chrissythebaker / @ncmadenet)
When New Yorker, Alison Roman, created something to rival the world’s most revered cookie, little did she know it would spark a complete internet craze.
Enter – the salted butter chocolate chip shortbread cookie.
“I just really don’t like chocolate chip cookies”, Alison told Eater.com, and we suspect she’s tasted a fair number of them in her life – having been the Senior Food Editor at Bon Appetit Magazine and BuzzFeed.
Brit+ Co. says that even though the year is young, “we’ve already laid eyes on the cookie of 2018”. Now that’s a big statement. It all started when Allison’s most recent cookbook (Dining In) was launched in late 2017. In the book, she featured a single cookie recipe and it was (you guessed it)… the salted butter chocolate chip shortbread cookie.
“It started with shortbread which I think is the perfect cookie anyway,” Alison told Eater Upsell in a podcast interview. “and then I just basically added chocolate to it”.
But that’s not where the real secret lies.
Alison incorporates salted butter (as opposed to unsalted butter) and brown sugar to give it more of a choc chip cookie-ness and to provide that enticing ‘crispy’ outer edge texture of traditional choc chip cookies. You’ll find that the ratios are also a bit different from plain shortbread.
Skillet by LifeHacker says of the recipe: “Baking with salted butter still borders on the taboo for most, and by demanding it, the cookies have given thousands of home cooks permission to do something rather naughty indeed.” Bring on the salted butterrrrr!
How did it go viral?
Once people started to cook from the book, Alison found that they would tag her in their Instagrams and so in an effort to self-promote the book, she began to screenshot the images and repost them. She says that this could well be the (ironic) future of promoting cookbooks online – with Instagram’s massive power to influence and the ‘word of mouth’ factor that it brings to the platform. Not to mention the visual element.
“I was trying to do every single one but now it’s literally impossible. I have to figure out a different way because I’m very behind right now,” she says in the interview.
The best of the whole story? You can find the actual recipe online for free without having to buy the book! How epic? Alison Roman for President!