For Extra Gooey Chocolate Chip Cookies, Just Add Ganache

If your favorite part of a chocolate chip cookie is the chocolate chips, then biting into a smooth, rich chocolate ganache center will be the ultimate pleasant surprise. Ganache is an easy and utterly delicious blend of chocolate and cream made by pouring hot cream over a chopped chocolate bar.

You can easily incorporate ganache into any chocolate chip cookie recipe to enhance the rich chocolate flavor and intensify the gooey, creamy center of the cookie. You'll still get those crisp outer edges, making the contrast even more irresistible. Dark chocolate is the best for this ganache, instilling intense chocolate notes and balancing the sugary dough and sweet chocolate chips. The easiest way to use ganache in chocolate chip cookies is to add hardened dollops to each raw dough ball before baking them.

After whisking the cream and chocolate together, you can pipe it or spoon eight-gram dollops (around ½ tablespoon) onto a baking sheet to harden in the freezer. While the ganache hardens, you'll make your chocolate chip cookie dough, rolling each cookie into dough balls to set in the fridge or freezer for up to 12 hours. Once both the ganache and cookie dough have spent the night setting, you'll cut the cookie dough balls and flatten each half with your hand. Place a frozen dollop of ganache in the middle of one half and use the other half to wrap around it and connect with the cookie dough foundation.

While it's tempting to bake cookie dough right after making it, the stint in the fridge makes all the difference in its shape and texture. Once you've formed each ganache-stuffed cookie into large dough balls, let them sit in the fridge for another night before baking them. This extra stint in the fridge will optimize the distribution of butter throughout the floury dough, thereby preventing spreading. Since you've stuffed your dough with chocolate ganache, preventing spreading is especially important for achieving that ultra-gooey center.

Instead of cream, you can also use butter in your ganache; for every 100 grams of chocolate, use 50 grams of butter or 60 grams of cream. The chocolate will set at room temperature, but you want the ganache dollops as solid and hard as you can get them to streamline cookie assembly. Another crucial tip is to ensure that you've pressed the cookie dough shells tightly together so that the ganache doesn't seep out as it bakes.

Lastly, ganache-filled cookies aren't for eating hot out of the oven. When the ganache is heated, it tends to separate, giving it a greasy mouthfeel fresh out of the oven. Letting your cookies cool will effectively reintegrate the ganache into the smooth, soft, chocolatey filling of your dreams. Dark chocolate ganache will complement the sweetness of toffee in these toffee chocolate chip cookies. It'd also provide even more sophistication to these complex brown butter chocolate chip cookies.