Wednesday, June 23, 2010

deep, dark chocolate cookies


Dorie Greenspan's Baking is one of the staples in my cooking library. I love this book, so much that I will try even the recipes that don't really appeal to me. I've had the book for several years, and at no point tried the Chocolate Chunkers. Don't get me wrong--I love almost anything chocolate. But I'm not much for dried fruit in my cookies or my chocolate, my husband hates nuts in dessert, and "chunkers" is a word that turns me off. So I didn't get around to trying the recipe until I needed to make chocolate-chocolate chip cookies for a friend. I thumbed through several baking books. Some of the recipes I found sounded all right, and some sounded a little iffy. But on closer reading, Dorie's cookies, with two kinds of chocolate melted into the batter and two more mixed in in chunks, sounded pretty amazing, name notwithstanding.

The first time I made these, I omitted the dried fruit and nuts and used bittersweet and milk chocolate for my mix-ins. Although I loved the batter, I didn't like the cookies until the next day, when they were thoroughly cool and so less sweet. This time, I made them sans fruit and nuts and with only bittersweet mixed in, in hopes that avoiding milk chocolate would make them enjoyable even before they cool. Because who wants to wait to enjoy double-chocolate cookies? Not me.

The result was indeed a cookie that I didn't have to wait a day to enjoy, though I expect I will again like these cookies still more after they've cooled completely. I love the intensity of these, although I'm considering the possibility that they would be best of all as Dorie intended them, with fruit and nuts to cut the richness.

deep, dark chocolate cookies (adapted from Baking, by Dorie Greenspan)

1/3 C flour
1/4 C unsweetened cocoa powder
.25 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp salt
6 oz bittersweet
1 oz unsweetened
3 oz butter
2 eggs
2/3 C sugar
1 tsp vanilla
12 oz bittersweet, coarsely chopped

Preheat oven to 350 F. Prepare two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt.

Place 6 oz bittersweet, 1 oz unsweetened, and butter in microwaveable bowl and microwave in twenty-second intervals, stirring between intervals, until melted. (Be careful not to overcook.)

Place eggs and sugar in a large bowl and beat on medium speed until foamy and pale. On low speed, mix in vanilla. Scrape down bowl. On low speed, mix in chocolate mixture until just combined. Still on low speed, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined. Stir in 12 oz bittersweet chocolate.

Spoon large tablespoons full of batter onto baking sheets, about an inch apart. Bake one sheet at a time for 10-12 minutes. Remove cookies from baking sheet and cool on cookie racks.

1 comment:

Braden said...

These've been a hit at the office.