TWD: Double Chocolate Cookies

Tuesdays with Dorie baking through Baking with Julia
by Dorie Greenspan
Contributing Baker: Rick Katz

This weeks recipe is an intense chocolate cookie; on the outside it has a paper-thin, crispy topping much like homemade brownies, their insides, truffle like. Pure chocolate goodness.

These tasted as good three days later, as they did the first day. Everyone enjoyed these. They may even make it into the Christmas cookie tin this year.

These cookies have a mixture of bittersweet and unsweetened chocolate - a whole pounds worth. Half of the bittersweet chocolate and the unsweetened chocolate gets melted down with butter for the batter, and the rest of the bittersweet is chopped in larger-than-chip-size chunks, and added to the chocolate mixture along with the dry ingredients.

As you can see, the cookie "dough" is not dough-like at all. It is more like a cake batter - so you have no choice but to chill the dough; no skimping out on this step.

Even after chilling, the dough is still not like your typical cookie dough - it is very soft and sticky; if you have ever made truffles, that is the texture this dough has. It took a little prodding to get the dough out of the scoop.

The instructions state that these are "spreaders" - to leave at least two inches of space between each mound. As you can see, I had very little spreading; I was expecting to pull out a pan of very flat cookies.

These cookies are fairly quick to make - aside from the chilling time. You know the saying.. good things come to those who wait. And these were good..

This post participates in Tuesdays with Dorie. Click here for links of all the talented bakers of our group, to see how they fared with this recipe.

Double Chocolate Cookies

Makes about 2 dozen cookies

½ cup all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

12 ounces bittersweet chocolate, cut into larger-than-chip-size chunks

1 stick (4 ounces) unsalted butter

4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, coarsely chopped

4 large eggs, at room temperature

1 ½ cups sugar

1 ½ tablespoons instant coffee powder

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside until needed. Divide the bittersweet chocolate in half and set half aside.

Place the butter, the remaining bittersweet chocolate, and the unsweetened chocolate in the top of a double boiler over, but not touching, simmering water. (Alternatively, you can use a heatproof bowl positioned over a saucepan of simmering water.) Heat the mixture, stirring occasionally, until the butter and chocolates are melted and smooth. Remove from the heat.

Meanwhile, put the eggs, sugar, coffee, and vanilla in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the whisk attachment and beat at high speed for about 10 minutes, until the mixture is very thick and forms a slowly dissolving ribbon when the whisk is lifted and the mixture is allowed to drizzle back into the bowl.

With the mixer on low speed, very gradually add the warm butter-chocolate mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and work your rubber spatula around the bottom of the bowl, then continue to mix just until the chocolate is thoroughly incorporated. Add the dry ingredients and the remaining bittersweet chocolate chunks and mix thoroughly. (You might find it more efficient to finish the mixing by gently folding the ingredients in with the rubber spatula.) The mixture will look like a thick, marshmallowy cake batter.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill for several hours, or overnight. The dough can be made ahead and kept refrigerated for up to four days.

When you are ready to bake, position the racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper.

Using a heaping tablespoon of dough for each cookie, drop the dough onto the lined sheets, leaving at least 2 inches of space between each mound of dough – these are spreaders. Bake the cookies for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating the pans front to back and top to bottom halfway through the baking period. The cookies will puff, then sink and crinkle and wrinkle around the edges. These cookies are better underdone than overbaked, so if you have any doubts, pull them out of the oven earlier rather than later. These shouldn’t appear dry and they won’t be crisp. Use a wide metal spatula to transfer the cookies to a cooling rack, and cool to room temperature.

These cookies can be wrapped in plastic and kept at room temperature for 2 days or frozen for up to a month. Thaw, still wrapped, at room temperature.

Baking with Julia/Dorie Greenspan/Rick Katz