chocolate chip cookie challenge part one

I swear by Smitten Kitchen's Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie. It has nice ratio between dough and chocolate chips. It's sweet and not overly so and like the recipe name suggests it's chewy on the inside and slightly crispy on the outside. What I also love is that it yields an enormous amount of cookies with very little effort. One batch makes  a dozen to bake and  a couple dozen more for freezing (I love a freshly baked cookie). I love sneaking into the kitchen and heating up the stove for a few warm gooey chocolate chips cookies. This recipe gives me that option and satisfies the craving whenever it hits, which is about once a week. I feel that they are the best chocolate chip cookies hands down.

Recently I purchased Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito. They are well known for their Baked Brownies which was voted Best Brownie by America's Test Kitchen. When I flipped through the pages I wanted to make and eat everything even their Chocolate Chip cookies. I couldn't resist a taste test and decided to make these cookies my first go round with this book. The recipe was fairly simple and straightforward and the tip about freezing the cookies for a warm treat later made me love them even more. In order to accurately test I also baked up a few of Smitten Kitchen's cookies. I had to do an honest taste test. 

The second I took the cookies out I instantly saw a difference. Baked's cookie was more cake like and smoother while Smitten's was more rustic looking. I lined them up called J down and we tasted them. While the sweetness and the texture of Baked's cookie was nice I'm not one for a cake type cookie, I like my cakes to be cakes and my cookies to be cookies. I think I'll stick with Smitten's...although I just picked up Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies by Alice Medrich...I feel another challenge coming on.

bakernoon turns to baking weeks

I’m going to say it “I hate winter.” Yes I know I live in Canada, I have lived here my whole life and it has never made winter any easier. Of course I love the snow and the chill in the air when it first shows up in December but when the holidays fade away and we move into the January and February I begin to resent the cold. Usually at this time I start to hibernate.  Baking returns with zeal now that the detox is over. I have decided that cookies are the ultimate food of choice. Over the last 2 weeks I have whipped up Smitten Kitchen’s Crispy Chewy Chocolate Chips (a favourite and one of the few things I repeatedly make), Dorie Greenspan’s Chocolate Roll Out Cookies in rabbit shapes and now Orangette’s Whole Wheat Sablés with Cacao Nibs.

I’ll always give a thumb up to the choco chip cookies. The rollouts were an experiment. As many of you may already know I don’t enjoy rolling out things, but I found a super cute rabbit cookie cutter that I had to use for Chinese New Years. It’s worth freezing the cookies for asked for time, the flavours were better, the dough was easier to roll and cut and the cookies did not spread as much. These cookies had a deep rich chocolate flavour due to mixing cocoa powder and chocolate together. They are definitely worth it if you roll them a little thicker (1/4 of an inch) and undercook them slightly. When you do that you get a bit more of a bite to it and had a brownie type texture to them. Dust them off with a little icing sugar and you’re good to go.

I’m not entirely convinced whole-wheat flour belongs in cookies but Molly from Orangette was convinced that this is the way. Using my last 1/3 cup of delicious cocoa nibs from Soma I made these cookies. Again I did something different by rolling the dough into a log and putting it in the fridge. Slicing them and baking them was a breeze. While there is a bit of nuttiness from the whole-wheat flour and a nice deep smoky chocolate flavour from the nibs I’m still not a believer. Molly says to give it day and it will taste better. I’ll try it again tonight and see….

Chocolate Roll Out Rabbits, adapted from Bon Appetit

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

3 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup (2 sticks) butter, room temperature

1 1/3 cups sugar

1 large egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat over to 350 degrees. Mix the dry ingredients (minus the sugar) in a bowl together.  Melt the chocolate on a double broiler remove and let cool. Beat butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Beat in egg. Reduce speed to low and add vanilla and chocolate. Add flour mixture and beat until just combined. Make a ball with the finished dough and cut in half. Flatten the balls into discs and plastic wrap them for at least 4 hours.

Take the dough and roll it out on a floured surface until about 1/4 inch thick. Cut out the cookies and place about 1 inch apart from each other on parchment lined baking sheets. Bake for about 10 minutes. The cookies will be puffier and firmer and have slightly darker edges. Take out and let cool. Dust lightly with icing sugar.

Warning makes a lot of cookies but they won’t last long.