Currently cooking from Good to the Grain by Kim Boyce
This is not a cookie for people who are on the fence about chocolate. This is a cookie for people who think a chocolate bar isn’t quite chocolatey enough.
As you must know by know, I fall firmly into that later camp.
These cookies have melted chocolate in the batter, chopped chunks of chocolate stirred into the batter and cacao nibs rolled around the batter. About the only way you could get more chocolate into them would be to dip the cookies in melted chocolate. But that might be overkill.
Anyway, if the amount of chocolate is frightening, maybe the fact that there is more than 2 cups of sugar in these cookies will distract you. On the healthy side, all the flour in the recipe is spelt flour. At least you are getting some whole grain goodness alongside the chocolate and sugar.
The recipe starts off by melting chocolate and butter. As those melt, sugar and eggs are whipped together until fluffy and sticky. The melted chocolate and butter are added to the eggs/sugar mixture and combined. Finally, spelt flour, baking powder, salt and chocolate chunks are stirred in. The batter needs to chill for at least two hours before baking, and right before baking, balls of batter are rolled in cacao nibs.
Here’s what I learned:
1. The batter, straight from the fridge, will be extremely thick and heavy and will not want to scoop. My suggestion is to either scoop the batter first, then chill, or let the batter warm up slightly.
2. Boyce says to use two tablespoons of batter for each cookie. That made monster cookies. I’d cut the amount of batter per cookie in half.
3. If you can’t find cacao nibs, anything crunchy will do. I went with slivered almonds. I think these cookies definitely benefit from having something crunchy in them.
4. Use good chocolate. Boyce recommends a chocolate with at least 70 percent cocoa butter. Anything sweeter might give you a toothache.
5. These cookies are best the day they are made. Especially when they are still warm from the oven. With a glass of cold milk.
6. If you don’t have spelt flour, all-purpose will probably work just fine. I couldn’t taste the spelt flour at all.
I’ve made these a few times, but have modified the recipe to make the cookies moister/chewier with better keeping properties. I replace 25% of the spelt with rye flour, and replace 25% of the white sugar with dark brown sugar.
I like your nuts idea and I think incorporating it into the batter would work well.
Hello,
Thank you for your great article. Also the pic is very nice.
Thanks
Good question. The cookies dried out a bit and weren’t as soft. They were still good (heck, we ate the whole the batch over the next few days) but I liked them best just slightly warm from the oven.
Okay, now you are talking. These sound so good….
Any recipe with the word chocolate in the title, not once but twice, is a recipe for me. When you say that they are best on the day made, does that mean they tend to dry out or something when stored? They sound delicious!