Salted Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie

A giant chocolate-chip cookie baked in a cast-iron skillet on a pizza oven’s dying heat — the oven is actually switched off for the first five minutes.

Untested: I have not cooked this one yet — the pizza oven has not been bought. It is here for the Pizza Ovens dive, and it is adapted from the source named in the Notes.

Ingredients

• 52 g (¼ cup) caster (superfine) sugar
• 80 g (½ cup, lightly packed) brown sugar
• 80 g (⅓ cup) unsalted butter, softened
• 3 g (¾ teaspoon) vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 130 g (1 cup) flour
• 1 g (¼ teaspoon) baking powder
• 100 g (¾ cup) chocolate chips
• 100 g (¾ cup) semi-sweet dark chocolate, chopped
• 4.5 g (1 teaspoon) vegetable oil or butter, for the pan
• 4 g (1 teaspoon) flaky sea salt

Directions

1. Mix the sugars, butter and vanilla until smooth. Beat in the egg. Sift in the flour and baking powder, then add half the chips and all the chopped chocolate.
2. Pan. Oil a seasoned 9-inch cast-iron skillet and press the dough in evenly with damp hands. Top with the rest of the chips and the flaky salt.
3. Heat the oven until the stone reads about 570 °F (300 °C), then turn it off — in a wood oven, let the fire die right down.
4. Bake 5 minutes in the switched-off oven, turning the pan halfway at 4 minutes. Then run the oven at its lowest (a small bed of coals) and bake about 11 minutes more, turning the skillet often, to 16 minutes in all — until puffed, medium golden, and a knife in the centre comes out clean apart from melted chocolate.
5. Rest 5 minutes and serve warm with ice cream, or chill at least an hour to slice.

Notes

Source Adapted from Chris Cowan, “Easy Salted Chocolate Chip Skillet Cookie,” on Ooni’s recipe pages (written for a gas oven switched off, then on low).

When The last thing of the evening in a wood oven: the fire allowed to die, the oven still full of heat.

The Pizza Ovens dive on the Food site covers the oven, the fire and the dough in depth.