thick, dense chocolate cookies
adapted from christopher kimball’s the dessert bible
makes 30+ cookies or 50+ with 1in. dough scoops
1 pound semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
10 tablespoons (1¼ sticks) unsalted butter
6 large eggs
2 cups granulated sugar
¾ cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
12 ounces chopped walnuts or pecans
12 ounces chocolate chips
Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler and remove from heat right before it’s completely melted. The residual heat will finish the melting. Set aside to cool. In a large bowl, whip eggs and sugar until thick and pale yellow, about five minutes at high speed. Combine melted chocolate with egg mixture until well blended. In a separate bowl, sift together flour and baking powder, and fold into chocolate mixture (without over-mixing). Mix in nuts and chocolate chips.
Chill dough for at least two hours. Pre-heat oven to 350. Scoop out dough and place three inches apart. Bake for 18 minutes, rotating halfway through baking. Remove and cool on wire rack.
Author’s note: cookies do not hold well and should be eaten within 48 hours.
Note: Dough balls should be large, at least two inches in diameter. Not only will smaller cookies bake more quickly, it’s less likely they’ll be dense and fudgy. Also, chilling the dough will ensure that the dough doesn’t melt and spread out while baking. Make sure to let cookies cool all the way to room temperature. Otherwise, like brownies, they’ll be harder to remove and won’t hold their shape as well.
edit: I used this recipe for a company picnic on Monday, but grossly overestimated the amount of dough it would produce and had a lot leftover. Thus the leftovers were used for weekly movie night at Steve’s, but this time I tried using a smaller scoop since the large cookies took up so much space, led to a lot of batches. I was a little wary of overbaking the cookies since the author made a specific note of not using a small scoop. Cookies baked for 15 minutes, switched racks and flipped back to front halfway through. Even though they were still incredibly moist and gooey (much like a brownie), they were much easier to get off the parchment.
You know how removing brownies that haven’t cooled all the way tend to stick to the pan and are just a general pain? That’s how the first batch of cookies turned out. Even after cooling all the way to room temperature, they still stuck to the spatula that I used to remove them. And because I had plated them the night before, they had all molded into one single chocolate cookie mound the next day. The second batch of cookies were easy peasy. Hahah I guess I have to practice baking more.
picture via seven spoons
