Chocolate Chip Cookie Tart Recipe

The two things I love best about a chocolate chip cookie is the raw uncooked dough (salmonella who?) and the soft and gooey meltiness just after the cookie emerges from the oven. I was really craving that fresh from the oven cookie but wanted to make a whole dessert out of it, like a brownie pie, so I decided to make a chocolate chip cookie pie. (It actually morphed into a tart, but will work in both types of plates). To get a handle on the volume of cookie dough I needed to fill my 9-inch plate, I perused the handy dandy internet for an idea of ingredient amounts.

I started out wanting to simply toss the dough straight in the pan. But after futzing around with ingredients to land on a texture which, even when cool, kept that sort of dense, moist texture of a warm cookie, I realized I'd need some sort of crust to support it and let me get a slice out in one piece. I kept it simple though, with an easy press-in shortbread crust that doesn't need to be pre-baked. I had a pretty tart pan lying around so I used that to bake the final pie.

This tart doesn't even need a mixer to make. Both the crust and filling are stirred in a bowl. Melted butter and a lesser ratio of flour than your typical cookie keep it indefinitely at that underdone stage even though I could tell that it had indeed cooked through (the filling will begin to soufflé). Crunchy walnuts add texture. Because the filling is moist, the chips tend to sink to the bottom, creating a fudgy layer of chocolate underneath the buttery cookie layer. To top off a warm slice, I couldn't resist a scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and a squirt of chocolate sauce.