Cool Nights, Hot Baking: Honey Sweetened Chocolate-Walnut Cookies

It might still be summer, but one cool Wisconsin night was all it took to get us baking.

Summer isn’t over yet. The days are still warm, the garden is still producing, and the bees are still busy working the late-summer flowers. But every once in a while, Wisconsin gives us that first cool evening that feels just a little bit like fall.

You know the one. The windows are open, the temperature drops, and suddenly turning on the oven sounds like a pretty good idea.

That was all the excuse we needed.

Recently, we’ve been seeing the enormous chocolate chip walnut cookies made famous by New York’s Levain Bakery getting some renewed attention, including a version featured by Cook’s Illustrated. These aren’t your ordinary chocolate chip cookies. They’re big, thick, packed with chocolate and walnuts, browned on the outside, and soft in the middle.

Naturally, we started wondering: Could we make a bakery-style chocolate chip cookie using honey instead of refined sugar?

Turns out, you absolutely can.

Baking Cookies with Honey

Replacing granulated sugar with honey isn't quite as simple as swapping one for the other. Honey contains water, while granulated sugar doesn't, and honey also browns more quickly in the oven.

For this recipe, that's actually an advantage. Honey helps create a beautifully browned exterior and gives the cookie a subtle depth of flavor that works incredibly well with dark chocolate, butter, toasted walnuts, and vanilla.

The challenge is keeping the cookie thick rather than allowing that extra moisture to make it spread across the baking sheet. That's why this recipe uses cold butter, plenty of flour, a little cornstarch, and most importantly, cold dough.

Honey Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies

Makes approximately 8 very large bakery-style cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup cold unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

• ¾ cup Wisconsin Bee Company honey

• 2 large eggs, cold

• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

• 3 cups all-purpose flour

• ¼ cup cornstarch

• 1 teaspoon baking soda

• ¾ teaspoon salt

• 2 cups semisweet or dark chocolate chips or roughly chopped chocolate

• 1½ cups walnuts, roughly chopped

For an even deeper flavor, lightly toast the walnuts before adding them to the dough. Just make sure they're completely cool first.

Making the Dough

Preheat your oven to 400°F and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Beat the cold cubed butter until it begins to soften and come together. Add the honey and continue mixing until incorporated. Because you're working with honey instead of granulated sugar, the mixture won't become light and fluffy in quite the same way as traditional creamed butter and sugar.

Add the eggs one at a time, followed by the vanilla.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, baking soda, and salt. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix only until a dough forms.

Fold in the chocolate and walnuts by hand. Don't be shy here. Part of what makes this style of cookie so good is the almost ridiculous amount of chocolate and walnuts packed into each one.

Go Big

Now comes the fun part.

Divide the dough into approximately eight large portions, roughly 6 ounces each. Keep them tall and somewhat rough rather than rolling them into perfectly smooth balls. That irregular shape helps produce the craggy bakery-style exterior we're after.

Place the formed cookies in the refrigerator for at least one hour. You can also refrigerate them overnight. Chilling is especially important when baking with honey because it helps control spreading.

Place only four cookies on each baking sheet so they have plenty of room.

Bake for approximately 10–14 minutes, watching them carefully toward the end. Honey browns quickly, so look for a deeply golden exterior while the centers still appear slightly underdone.

Allow the cookies to remain on the baking sheet for at least 10–15 minutes after they come out of the oven. The residual heat will continue setting the centers without overbaking them.

The Hardest Part Is Waiting

A cookie this big needs a few minutes to settle, even though the smell of toasted walnuts, melted chocolate, butter, and honey is going to make waiting difficult.

Break one open while it's still warm and you should find exactly what we were hoping for: a deeply browned exterior surrounding a thick, soft center loaded with melted chocolate and walnuts.

The honey isn't overpowering. Instead, it brings a warm, almost caramel-like sweetness that feels right at home with the chocolate and toasted nuts.

Pour a glass of milk or make a cup of coffee and call it a successful evening.

A Little Preview of Fall

We're not rushing summer away. There are still plenty of warm afternoons, flowers blooming, and work to be done in the bee yard before autumn arrives.

But we'll admit that first cool night got us thinking about what's coming next.

Cool evenings. Open windows. Something baking in the oven. And another reason to find a new way to use Wisconsin honey.

If you've been looking for a baking recipe that uses honey as the primary sweetener, put this one on your list for the next cool night.

Just make the cookies big. Really big.

From our hives to your kitchen, happy baking. 🍯🍪🐝