Roll Your Cookies In A Salty-Sweet Coating For Unforgettable Flavor

Cookie dough is often rolled in sugar before baking to give the cookies a sweet crunchy coating, but for a flavor boost your taste buds will love, try adding some salt to the mix. Salty and sweet is the ultimate flavor combination for the tastiest desserts – a dash of salt enhances the sweetness in food. This is the main reason why most cookie recipes call for a pinch of salt (around ¼ to ½ teaspoon, generally). 

While a pinch of salt mixed in the dough is typically undetectable in the final product (meaning it will make your cookies sweeter rather than creating a notable salt taste), rolling your cookie dough in a sugar/salt mixture will allow you to actually taste the saltiness, in a good way. If you enjoy salted caramel or salted chocolate, you'll love the sweet and salty coating on these cookies. There are a variety of cookie recipes that work well with a sugar/salt coating, but it tastes particularly delicious with flavors like butterscotch, butter pecan, chocolate chip, and caramel (like a salted caramel-stuffed white chocolate chip cookie).

Many recipes for salted cookies call for sprinkling sea salt or flaky salt on the cookies right after they come out of the oven. However, for this sweet and salty cookie trick, add about 1 teaspoon of salt to around ⅓ cup of sugar and evenly coat your cookie dough balls in the mixture. Then, place them evenly spaced on your cookie sheet and bake according to your recipe. Feel free to adjust the amount of salt used in the coating to your liking. Table salt, opposed to flaky or sea salt, works best for creating an even coat on the cookies.

As with any cookie recipe, you should chill your cookie dough overnight or for at least 30 minutes. The main reasons for chilling your cookie dough are to dry out the dough to undilute the flavor and improve the texture, and to harden the fat to prevent the cookies from over-spreading as they bake. After the dough has chilled, you can let it sit at room temperature for no longer than 5 to 10 minutes to make it easier to scoop and to help the sugar/salt mixture stick better to the dough. Some recipes for sugar coated cookies advise dipping the dough in water before dipping it in the sugar to help it stick, although this may not be necessary. After tasting the final product, you'll realize this single, simple extra step is worth it for the tastiest sweet and salty cookies imaginable.