Working Girl Cooks!

It’s Christmas! This is the time of year we are celebrate love, joy and peace! I figured, given the time of year, these were more than appropriate cookies to make as part of my Holiday Cookie List. I have been wanting to make these cookies for awhile, everyone in the food blogging world gives them rave reviews and they are chocolate! How can you go wrong with chocolate? This recipe is from Dorie Greenspan’s book Baking: From My Home to Yours. Because I have not asked Dorie’s permission to reprint her recipe I will not give it to you here. But you can find it here or here or here or here or…ok I’m done.

The Ingredient List: White Granulated Sugar, Baking Soda, Fleur de Sel, Unsweetened Cocoa Powder, All Purpose Flour, Brown Sugar, Vanilla Extract, Butter, and Mini Chocolate Chips.

The recipe says to have the butter at room temp and whip it until it is smooth and creamy. Well, my butter was frozen and when I tried to gently thaw it in the microwave on the defrost setting I forgot about it and accidentally melted it! Oops! I tried to cool it by sticking it in the freezer but I am way to impatient to wait for these things so I said screw it! I think it turned out fine. Once the butter is whipped, or in my case, melted, add the sugars and cream until smooth. Then sift in the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda, and salt.

Now this part was a little weird, and I’m not sure I did this right. Dorie says to cover your bowl with a towel to prevent flour from flying everywhere, then using your mixer on the low setting, pulse for 1-2 seconds five times. Then check to see if your flour has been incorporated into the dough. If it has for the most part then you can remove the towel and keep pulsing the mixer until the flour has been fully incorporated. If there is still a lot of loose flour, keep pulsing underneath the towel.

Well, I tried this, but my flour was barely mixed after five pulses and being the impatient person I am I said screw it (once again) and just used a spatula to mix the flour into the dough. Finish off by mixing in your mini chocolate chips. Dorie says the important thing is to NOT overwork your dough! So mix as little as possible.

Once the dough is fully mixed, separate it into two balls of dough on some parchment paper and role each dough into two little logs. Wrap these logs in saran wrap and place into the fridge for at least three hours. The dough can be frozen for several months or kept in the fridge for several days.

When you are ready to bake, the dough should be nice and rock hard. Just unwrap your log and slice into 1/4” pieces.

Place your cookies on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and bake!

I’m not sure if they were supposed to come out this way, I could blame it on the melted butter, or my lack of pulsing skill, but they were very flat. Don’t get me wrong they were still very good! The perfect amount of chocolate, with a nice crisp taste. And the salt gave these cookies a slight caramel taste….YUM! But I think they are supposed to be…thicker. Oh well, they were still as good as I imagined and were a big hit among everyone!