These cookies are chewy and crisp, overloaded with chocolate and downright luxe. Start these a day ahead to give the dough time to rest.

Makes 20

• 280g plain (all-purpose) flour
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt flakes, plus extra for sprinkling (for that salty ‘pop’)
• 150g unsalted butter, softened
• 150g brown sugar
• 100g caster (superfine) sugar
• 1 egg, at room temperature
• 2 teaspoons vanilla bean paste
• 250g dark chocolate chips

Combine the flour, bicarbonate of soda, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Give these dry ingredients a good whisk and set aside.

Using an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter, sugars, egg and vanilla. (I add the egg at this point because the added moisture helps the butter really cream up.)

Add all of the dry ingredients and the chocolate chips to the butter mixture and mix until just combined. Do not overmix the dough once the flour has been added – you don’t want to develop any of the gluten in the flour, as this will leave you with a tough cookie.

This is the hardest step of all: refrigerate your cookie dough for 12–36 hours before baking. The longer you refrigerate the dough, the more flavour development will occur, the less the cookies will spread and the better the overall texture will be. Seems worth it, hey?

When you’re ready to bake your cookies, preheat the oven to 180°C fan-forced. Line two baking trays with baking paper or silicone baking mats. Place six golf ball-sized rounds of dough on each tray, using about 50g dough for each one. The cookies will spread, so give them space to do their thing. Sprinkle with extra sea salt flakes.

Bake the cookies in batches for 12–14 minutes or until they’re caramelised around the edges but still soft and blonde towards the centre.

Allow the cookies to cool on the trays for 15 minutes before transferring to a wire rack, then dive in, head first!

Note:
You can refrigerate the cookie dough for anywhere between 12 and 36 hours (or even longer if you wish, and you can even freeze the rolled dough balls). My general recommendation is 24 hours. If you just can’t help yourself, you can bake a few cookies immediately and refrigerate the rest of the dough for the following day. Run your own experiments with timing and decide whether or not you think it makes a difference. The dough will be really firm once chilled, so you can roll the dough balls in advance and refrigerate them, ready to bake.

Mix it up!

Leave out the dark chocolate chips and you have a great base recipe for any flavoured drop cookie. Here are some suggestions:

White chocolate, sour cherry and pistachio cookies
Add 175 g (6 oz) white chocolate chips, 60 g (2 1⁄4 oz) dried sour cherries and 60 g (2 1⁄4 oz) roasted pistachios.

Blueberry, lemon and white chocolate cookies
Add 200 g (7 oz) white chocolate chips, 30 g (1 oz) freeze-dried blueberries and the grated zest of 1 lemon.

Milk chocolate hazelnut crunch cookies
Add 175 g (6 oz) milk chocolate chips, 75 g (2 1⁄2 oz) roughly chopped roasted hazelnuts and 25 g (1 oz) crispy dark chocolate pearls.

How to get your cookies perfectly round:

1. Remove the tray of cookies from the oven a couple of minutes before they’ve finished baking. You want them to still be soft to allow for some shaping action.

2. Take a cookie cutter, ring cutter or anything round that’s slightly wider than your cookies. I have a pack of ring cutters that has about ten different sizes in it. I highly recommend buying one.

3. Place the cutter over one of the piping-hot cookies and move it around in a circular motion, shaping the cookie as you move the cutter. Watch as your cookie goes from a randomly spread shape to a perfect circle, right before your eyes!

4. Repeat with the remaining cookies, then return your cookies to the oven for the final couple of minutes of baking.

And here’s another free tip: perfectly placed chocolate chips can be added on top of your cookies as soon as you pull them out of the oven. The chocolate chips will melt with the heat but still hold their form and reset as the cookies cool, without burning the chocolate. Simple and pretty as a picture.