My soft chocolate cookies are soft but still too crumbly. How should I fix it?

Question

The taste is great and it is soft, a bit chewy and not dry, but it is still too crumbly. When I push it, it is too easy to break apart. Could you please explain how I should fix this.

Recipe

• All purpose flour - 138g.
• Melted butter / unsalted - 100g.
• Baking powder - 5g.
• Milk powder - 20g.
• Cacao powder - 40g.
• Melted dark chocolate (62%) - 30g (mix it together with the melted butter).
• Brown sugar - 125g.
• 1 Egg.

Method

1. I use a flour mixer machine to mix the melted chocolate with the melted butter and brown sugar for 3 minutes (I mix them when the melted butter and melted chocolate are still warm).
2. Add the egg and beat for 2 minutes.
3. Add the cacao powder and milk powder and beat for 1 minute.
4. Add the flour.
5. Beat together for 2-3 minutes.
6. Chill the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes - 1 hour.
7. Bake:
   • When I bake at 200C for 10 minutes, it is soft and a bit chewy, but easy to break.
   • When I bake at 200C for 10 minutes and 180C for a further 5 minutes, it becomes less breakable, but not soft.

Answer 1

One think I would try is changing up the egg white to egg yolk recipe by multiplying the other ingredients by 1.5x and adding an extra yolk. Egg yolks are a source of emulsified fat and they keep cookies fudgier (and chewier). For other variables you can tweak, you might look at J. Kenji Lopez Alt's guide to chocolate chip cookies. He takes each ingredient 1 by 1 and changes it up to see how it effects his cookie texture. Your cookies are going to be a little different thanks to the extra fats from the chocolate (hence why I think an emulsifier would help), but it should still be a helpful resource.

Answer 2

Here is a trick from The Perfect Cookie Cookbook. I do this all the time now.

Take away 1 tablespoon butter and add 1 tablespoon cooking oil. I have been using sunflower oil but any minimally flavored (corn, canola) or nutty oil should work. Not coconut oil - the idea is that the oil is less solid at room temperature than butter but coconut oil is comparable to butter.

The cookies are less crumbly and more chewy. They are better!

Answer 3

I notice a serious lack of liquid in this recipe. This results in the flour not fully being dissolved and the cookies being crumbly.

Replacing the milk powder with milk should improve the recipe, or you could just add some water.