I've seen this cookie recipe a couple different places now, and my husband had stumbled it to me. I knew I just had to try them. They were featured recently in the New York Times. Last Saturday afternoon I mixed up the dough. I tried to follow the recipe pretty closely, which is a rare thing sometimes. I used 70% cacao chocolate chunks from Whole Foods, and King Arthur's whole wheat pastry flour for the cake flour. The dough was quite delicious and promising, but aside from nibbling on it a bit, I now had this big bowl of almost cookies that I couldn't enjoy for another 24 hours. (Recipe is here.)
So I made up a smaller batch with the recipe from Fannie Farmer, with a few modifications: I drizzled some chocolate sauce directly into the batter before adding the chips, so the dough was dark as well. Then I didn't have any vanilla at the time, so I improvised: I added a pinch of cloves, nutmeg, and ground black pepper. In retrospect I would've been a bit more generous with those, as they didn't add quite enough of the kick I was looking for.
On to Sunday night, when I can finally bake these so-called fabulous cookies :) The one thing I changed the most was that I made them pretty small. Next time I'll try the gigantic ones the recipe calls for. I like having small cookies, because it's more to share, and less of a commitment.
I got to use my new silicone baking sheets, which performed quite nicely, I must say.
At first I spaced them out a lot more, because I thought they would spread more, but they didn't. I'm not completely sure why, but I think the flour measurement might have been a little off. I'll try to be more precise next time.
Mmm, low-light photography. We have a projector pointing at the wall for a TV, and my husband was playing a video game, so I only had the oven light on for awhile. It was kind of nice for cooking, not-so-much for photos. Btw, I love my new tiered cooling rack. I blame that for some of the inspiration to bake lately <grin>
At the end I had about 86 cookies (a couple might have been forgotten in the quality check process...) I thought they were best either straight out of the oven, or 2 days later when they softened a bit. In the meantime they were a little bit hard, and definitely not as chewy as the picture from NY Times seems to indicate. But still, they were quite tasty. My husband is not a big fan of dark chocolate, and he thought they'd be perfect if they were made with a lighter chocolate, and had a little less salt sprinkled on top. I thought that was a pretty high compliment.
We each took half the batch to our respective offices, and they were fairly well received all around. My office is pretty small, but he said his was gone within a couple hours or so. Definitely have to try those again sometime.
So I made up a smaller batch with the recipe from Fannie Farmer, with a few modifications: I drizzled some chocolate sauce directly into the batter before adding the chips, so the dough was dark as well. Then I didn't have any vanilla at the time, so I improvised: I added a pinch of cloves, nutmeg, and ground black pepper. In retrospect I would've been a bit more generous with those, as they didn't add quite enough of the kick I was looking for.
On to Sunday night, when I can finally bake these so-called fabulous cookies :) The one thing I changed the most was that I made them pretty small. Next time I'll try the gigantic ones the recipe calls for. I like having small cookies, because it's more to share, and less of a commitment.
I got to use my new silicone baking sheets, which performed quite nicely, I must say.
At first I spaced them out a lot more, because I thought they would spread more, but they didn't. I'm not completely sure why, but I think the flour measurement might have been a little off. I'll try to be more precise next time.
Mmm, low-light photography. We have a projector pointing at the wall for a TV, and my husband was playing a video game, so I only had the oven light on for awhile. It was kind of nice for cooking, not-so-much for photos. Btw, I love my new tiered cooling rack. I blame that for some of the inspiration to bake lately <grin>
At the end I had about 86 cookies (a couple might have been forgotten in the quality check process...) I thought they were best either straight out of the oven, or 2 days later when they softened a bit. In the meantime they were a little bit hard, and definitely not as chewy as the picture from NY Times seems to indicate. But still, they were quite tasty. My husband is not a big fan of dark chocolate, and he thought they'd be perfect if they were made with a lighter chocolate, and had a little less salt sprinkled on top. I thought that was a pretty high compliment.
We each took half the batch to our respective offices, and they were fairly well received all around. My office is pretty small, but he said his was gone within a couple hours or so. Definitely have to try those again sometime.
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