Currently baking out of Great Cookies by Carole Walter

I fell for black pepper back in ninth-grade home ec class when Trisha Campbell put black pepper on my chocolate chip cookie dough as a joke. I use black pepper like most people use salt, and I’ve been obsessed about making a black pepper ice cream for years. So when I saw that these cookies called for freshly ground black pepper, I jumped all over them.

Unfortunately, the cookies fell far short of what I was expecting. Despite the teaspoon of black pepper in the dough, I thought they were a little bland. I couldn’t taste the pepper, and the chocolate flavor wasn’t very pronounced. The cookies worked well in ice cream sandwiches, however.

This is a pretty easy recipe to make. Butter and bittersweet chocolate are melted together and mixed with a bit of espresso powder. To that mixture, sugar, eggs and some vanilla are added. Flour, cocoa powder, black pepper, baking soda and salt are sifted and stirred into the wet ingredients making a very soft dough. The dough gets rolled into logs and refrigerated for several hours until firm. When you are ready to bake the cookies, you slice the dough into rounds and bake.