I adapted this recipe from Cookie Swap by Lauren Chattman:
Ingredients
4 oz unsweetened chocolate finely chopped
8 oz semisweet or bittersweet chocolate finely chopped
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter cut into pieces
½ cup unbleached all-purpose flour
½ tsp baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
4 large eggs
1 ½ cups of sugar
1 ½ tsp pure vanilla extract
1 ½ cups chopped peppermint bark
Directions
1.
Preheat oven to 350⁰F. Line several baking
sheets with parchment paper.
2.
Put water to a depth of 1 inch in the bottom of
a double boiler or medium saucepan set over low heat and bring to a bare
simmer. Combine the unsweetened chocolate, semisweet chocolate, and the butter
in the top of the double boiler or in a stainless steel bowl set on top of the
simmering water, making sure that the water doesn’t touch the bottom of the
bowl. Heat whisking occasionally, until the chocolate and butter are completely
melted. Set aside to cool slightly.
3.
Combine flour, baking powder and salt in a small
bowl.
4.
Place eggs and sugar in a large bowl and beat
with an electric mixer on high until they are thick and pale (about 5 minutes).
Add the chocolate mixture and vanilla and beat on low until smooth. Add the
flour mixture and beat until just combined. Stir in the peppermint bark. Place
the bowl, uncovered, in the refrigerator to let the dough firm up, for 15
minutes (or up to 6 hours).
5.
Drop the dough by the heaping tablespoon onto
the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 3 inches between each cookie.
6.
Bake the cookies until the tops are cracked and
shiny, 10-12 minutes. Carefully slide the parchment paper with the cookies to a
wire rack and let the cookies cool completely.
O.k. so that was the “right” way to do it.
Lemme tell you how it went down in my kitchen…
First of all ,they grocery store didn’t
have any solid unsweetened chocolate so I ended up having to buy powdered chocolate
instead. No problem...I thought; I’ll just weigh it out on the scale so that I
have 4 oz. like the recipe calls for. BUT, I didn’t read the instructions on
the container. There were special instructions for using the chocolate powder as baking chocolate.
Duh!
So when I heated everything together I ended up with a hard, dry, hot
mess! It didn’t look right so eventually I figured out what I did wrong and
added the oil to the mixture. Voila! Now it looked like melty, gooey, yummy
chocolate that dripped off the spoon. Ummm, it took everything in me not to
start dipping strawberries in it and just forgo the cookies all together for chocolate
fondue!
Next challenge...this double broiler thing is
a b*tch! Especially since I didn’t have a double broiler and I opted to go
with the stainless steel bowl in some water method. I ended up just plopping the bowl
into a pot of boiling water because it was impossible to find a bowl and a pot
the correct size so that the bowl could magically hover above the boiling water
without touching it! Note to self: buy a double broiler thingamajigy. The rest of the recipe went pretty smoothly. I should mention that I ghetto-rigged (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ghetto%20rigged) the peppermint bark pieces by putting a bunch of Peppermint Hershey’s Kisses in my Ninja blender and pulsing it until I had chopped pieces. Don’t laugh! Again, I’ll blame this one on the grocery store for not having enough peppermint bark. After searching high and low, the only kind I could find were Ghirardelli Squares for like $6 a pack—uh yeah right! So Peppermint Hershey’s Kisses in the blender is what I ended up with.
They came out awesome; I'm obviously not a food photographer because the pics don’t do
them justice!
Very chocolaty...the cookie recipe itself is a keeper and sans
the peppermint would yield cookies to satisfy any chocolate addict. And I’ve
already gotten requests to make them again substituting the peppermint with
white chocolate chips or chocolate chunks next time. Wooo Whooo!
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