Have you ever googled “muffin top”? Because you come across pretty interesting sutff. Or disgusting. Sometimes both.
Anyway, that’s not how the idea of muffin top cookies came to me. I was just setting out to make regular cookies for my students’ last class. It was late, cookies sounded like the quickest thing to make without running to the grocery store, so I followed the first recipe that popped up in my reader, and I ended up with these. Sometimes chance works in mysterious ways. When I saw them come out of the oven, I was like “what are these? my students are going to laugh at me, no way they’ll ever want to eat cookies that look like this“. I’m sure you know that 15-year olds are quite judgmental, but don’t blame them, it’s peer pressure.
I tasted one straight out of the oven, and I realized my mistake: they were goooooood. So good, and soft, and chewy, yet crispy on top. Hence their appellation. Doesn’t matter if it brings to mind unflattering body images, the name still fits them perfectly. So if you’re too lazy to make one batch of muffins and one batch of cookies, whip those up. My students loved them.
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Muffin top cookies
Prep time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Yields about 20-25 cookies
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup butter, at room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1/2 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract or 1/2 tbsp vanilla sugar
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 cup chocolate chips (I used black and white)
Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 360°F. In a medium bowl, combine flour, baking powder and salt.
2. In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until soft and fluffy. Add one egg at a time, beating between each addition. Add in vanilla. Blend in the dry ingredients. Mix until just combine; do not overmix. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula.
3. Roll into balls with a tablespoon (or a small ice cream scoop) and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Bake for about 15 minutes. Bite into one while still warm, just for the heck of it, then store them away before eating the whole batch.
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My tips:
- Use only 1 egg if you want them to be more cookie-like. This is where I originally messed up, and where this mistake became a beautiful thing. Just sayin’.
- You can add 1/2 cup sliced almonds.
- You can sprinkle 1/2 tsp fleur de sel on top right before baking.
Source: slightly adapted from Everybody Likes Sandwiches.
Hahaha. Clem, these look like American cookies! Fluffy, not flat. When I was in France I was desperate to figure out how to make them this texture without Crisco (yuck, btw) – so thanks for sharing!
Did you mean to type 1 cup butter instead of 1/2 cup? I followed your recipe and my cookies didn’t flatten out at all and were very floury. I clicked on your source Everybody Likes Sandwiches and it had twice the amount of butter that you had listed.
Hi Grace! Actually, I made them again this afternoon, and I realized what I had wrong was the flour measurement: it was 1 1/2 cups flour, not 3. Sorry about that! I rectified it right away, thank you for making me notice (and giving me an excuse to bake cookies today!)