Blueberry and Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies with Orange Zest
These chewy, easy blueberry chocolate chip cookies are loaded with fresh blueberries and dark chocolate with just a hint of orange zest and flaky sea salt to top them off. They're easy to make — no mixer required! — and have the perfect balance of sweet, tart, bitter, and salty flavors.
Ingredients
- 120 grams blueberries (about 85 grams dried / ¾ cup, about ½ cup once dried)
- 113 grams unsalted butter (1 stick / 8 tablespoons)
- 80 grams brown sugar
- 80 grams white sugar
- 1 large egg (room temperature)
- ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon orange zest
- 160 grams all-purpose flour
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- ½ teaspoon diamond crystal kosher salt (use half as much if using a different brand)
- 113 grams dark chocolate bar (hand chopped)
- flaky sea salt (optional, for topping)
Instructions
- Dry the blueberries: Preheat oven to 200°F. Arrange blueberries on lined sheet pan. Place on middle rack for 2-4 hours, shaking pan occasionally. Blueberries shouldn't burst, but will wrinkle and shrink slightly. You aren't turning them into raisins, just removing about 25% of the water content.
- Melt, then cool the butter: Melt butter in 15-20 second bursts in a large microwave safe bowl. Let cool for 20-30 minutes, until bowl is cool to the touch and butter has just barely started to solidify around the edges.
- Whisk: Add both sugars and whisk vigorously, 1-2 minutes. The mixture should be lighter in color, have a slightly gritty, paste-like texture, and will hold its shape when you stop whisking. Then, add the egg, vanilla extract, and orange zest. Whisk vigorously for another 1-2 minutes until very pale, smooth, cohesive, and glossy.
- Stir: Add the flour, salt, and baking soda. Switch to a spatula and stir until dry ingredients are almost completely incorporated. Then add blueberries and chopped dark chocolate and gently fold until evenly incorporated and no dry bits of flour remain in the bowl. Try not to burst any of the blueberries.
- Scoop: Use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to scoop the cookie dough onto a lined sheet pan. This can be a little fiddly so just be careful as you scoop to make sure you're getting an even distribution of blueberries in every scoop. The blueberries might burst a little (that's okay) and you want to make sure you don't accidentally scoop a cookie that is mostly blueberries or it won't hold together in the oven.
- Chill: Cover cookies and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours (ideally overnight) prior to baking. You can even freeze the dough balls and bake from frozen. Chilling the cookie dough is NOT optional. If you skip this step, the cookies will spread out into thin, crispy puddles in the oven.
- Bake: Preheat oven to 375°F. Arrange cookies on lined sheet pan with about 2-3" between them (I can usually fit 10 cookies on a sheet pan). Bake for 9-11 minutes, until edges are browned and tops have mostly set. Top immediately with flaky salt. Let cool on sheet pan 5 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.Optional flair: To get perfectly round cookies, use a round cutter or overturned glass to scoot them into shape while still hot out of the oven.
Be VERY GENTLE when you mix the blueberries into the cookie dough. It's okay if some of them burst, but you mostly want them to stay whole. If your cookie dough turns blue on you, don't worry — this won't hurt you cookies in any way! They'll just be a weird blue/purple color. The dough might also be a little stickier due to excess moisture, so you may want to mix in another 1-2 tablespoons of flour if the dough is hard to scoop. To prevent the cookies from turning blue/purple be gentle when you're mixing the dough — use the spatula to gently fold the ingredients together rather than mixing vigorously. You don't want too many of the blueberries to burst!
RECIPE NOTES
- Resting and drying time is combined. 2-4 hours to dry the blueberries, then at least 2 hours in the fridge for the cookies to chill before baking.
- You can dry the blueberries up to 3 days in advance. Store them in an airtight container in the fridge until ready to use.
- Yes, you can use chocolate chips instead of chopped chocolate in the cookie dough. However, this will change the way the cookies hold their shape in the oven. You won't get melty chocolate puddles on top or delicious hidden pockets of chocolate inside. Chocolate chips and store bought chocolate chunks have emulsifiers and stabilizers in them to help them keep their shapes in the oven. A hand chopped chocolate bar does not.
- To get chocolate puddles, save about ¼ of the chopped dark chocolate and use it to top the cookies after you scoop them. Or just chop more chocolate to use for topping!
- To freeze: Arrange on sheet pan in freezer. Once frozen, transfer to airtight bag or storage container. To bake from frozen you may need to add 1-2 minutes to the baking time.