A Chocolate Pretzel Cookie Wins Points on Game Day or Date Night

(Bloomberg) -- Editor's note: As we leave our home kitchens to dine out more, the weekly Lunch Break column has evolved to highlight dishes from a variety of sources: a new or reopened restaurant; a newsmaking person, place, or recipe; or, of course, a great cookbook.

For the first time ever, the Super Bowl and Valentine's Day make up a double-header holiday this year. When the NFL added a game to the 2021-22 schedule, it pushed the biggest day in football back a week.

That presents an opportunity—or challenge—for everyone who anticipates that Feb. 14 will be a day of recovery after too much dip and too many nachos the night before. Consider, then, an easy-to-make recipe that is as good a Valentine's Day treat as it is a big-game snack, and one that sends a more heartfelt message than a box of chocolate.

Here to save the day(s): A white chocolate chip pretzel cookie. It's a specialty at Maman, the excellent French-accented, New York City-based bakery chain that specializes in charming mismatched tableware and a caution that its 15 dining rooms in New York and Canada are laptop free environments. The newest Maman will open in Jersey City, N.J., on Valentine's Day, following pre-opening celebrations on the weekend of Feb. 5. In the lead-up to Valentine's Day, the stores will offer treats like bouquets of cookies affixed to real flower stems.

Maman founders Elisa Marshall and her husband Benjamin Sormonte are experts on the subject of cookies: Since they opened their first outpost in SoHo in 2014, their oversized, nutty, chocolate chip stunner has starred in many of the city's “best of” lists and beguiled Oprah. Marshall predicts that the white chocolate cookie will be one of the bestsellers in the Valentine flower bouquet, especially in the Big Apple. “It was the second cookie we created, and an ode to New York with the pretzels,” she says.

The recipe features in the book she and Sormonte wrote with Lauren Salkeld, Maman: The Cookbook. All Day Recipes to Warm Your Heart (Clarkson Potter; $30) that came out last fall. In it are such lifestyle-evoking recipes as Champagne cake decorated with strawberries, banana lavender cornmeal waffles garnished with mascarpone, and even a towering egg sandwich with an oozing layer of bacon bourbon jam.

None of the recipes are especially challenging, but the jumbo-sized pretzel cookies stand out for their simplicity. Into the basic butter cookie dough goes a big handful of roughly chopped mini pretzels—the kind you stock for a Super Bowl party—and white chocolate wafers, which are worth seeking out instead of chips.

The thin chocolate melts into the cookies as they bake, giving them a gorgeous gooey-ness and creating a powerful sweet and salty contrast to the pretzels. It's hard to think of a better dessert to complement a game day spread.

But the cookies carry over to Valentine's Day, too, because the pretzel garnish looks just like a little heart. To make the message even stronger, garnish the cookies with red, pink, and heart-shaped sprinkles, says Marshall. She also advocates shaping crushed pretzels into an even more distinguishable heart. For some of us, the inherent heart in a mini pretzel will be enough.

The following recipe is adapted from Maman: The Cookbook. All Day Recipes to Warm Your Heart, by Elisa Marshall and Benjamin Sormonte, with Lauren Salkeld.

Testers note from Marshall: Don't over-mix the dough or overwork it as you shape it into balls, so they will stay meltingly tender.

White Chocolate Pretzel Cookies

Makes 16 to 20 Cookies

1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 ¼ cups sugar
½ tsp. fine sea salt
2 large eggs
½ tsp. pure vanilla extract
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup white chocolate baking wafers, or chips (see Note)
1 cup salted mini pretzels, roughly chopped, plus whole pretzels for garnish
Valentine's Day themed sprinkles, for garnish (optional)

Preheat the oven to 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment. In a large bowl, beat the butter, sugar and salt until fully combined, about two minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, mixing thoroughly between each addition. Mix in the vanilla. Add the flour in two batches and mix on low speed until no flour is visible, about one minute. Fold in the white chocolate wafers and chopped pretzels.

Scoop half the dough into ¼ cup portions and roll into balls. Arrange on the baking sheet about 1 ½ inches apart. Top each cookie with a whole pretzel, pressing down firmly to flatten the cookie.

Bake in the center of the oven until the bottoms are just browned but the center is still a little gooey, 18-20 minutes. Sprinkle with the sprinkles, if using, pressing them lightly into the hot cookies and let cool on the baking sheet for 10 minutes. Transfer to a plate. Bake the remaining cookies. Eat warm or at room temperature. The cookies can be kept at room temperature for two days.

Note: Use chips if you must, but the texture will be different because the chips will hold their shape and won't melt into the dough.