A Cookie Long Overdue

It recently occurred to me that although I’ve made plenty of cookies with chocolate, including several takes on chocolate chunk biscotti, I have never actually put up a recipe for plain old American chocolate chip cookies.  It’s about time I rectified that.

These are not my trademark chocolate chip cookies, which are a kitchen-sink affair involving a number of extra ingredients I don’t currently have on hand.  Instead, I looked at the four different versions in my temporarily reduced cookbook collection and decided on the one in Entertaining for a Veggie Planet, because I can’t use Cook’s Illustrated every single time, and Didi Emmons has never failed to exceed expectations.  Her recipes always look deceptively simple, yet are supremely doable and yield huge taste dividends.

I made a few changes to the recipe, starting by doubling it to ensure I’d have enough to share.  I also added the hazelnuts from the deconstructed trail mix whence came the cashews for the granola bars, and supplemented them with walnuts because I didn’t have enough of either for the doubled amount.  Finally, I changed the method a little bit, and most importantly, aged the dough overnight.

Aging the batter overnight is not absolutely essential, but it does make a difference and is worth doing if you can. I discovered this inadvertently years ago when I was routinely too time-pressed or lazy to bake all the dough on a single day, and eventually realized that the next-day batch was always better than the first day’s.  Apparently this is because the flour has more time to fully hydrate, as the New York Times recently reported, setting off a blogstorm of cookie baking with the Jacques Torres-inspired recipe that accompanied the article.  It’s nice to know that the wages of sloth are chewy, buttery, and chocolatey.

The appropriately aged cookies were a little flatter than I would like but were quite tasty, especially with a tiny sprinkling of extra sea salt on top, as suggested by the NYT.  In the future, I would bump up the quantity of nuts for a little more structure, and probably just use hazelnuts if possible, since hazelnuts do not get enough cookie love outside Italy, in my biased opinion.

These are not a replacement for my trademark version, which I still (immodestly) think are close to perfect, but there’s nothing wrong with a perfectly respectable second place.

Chocolate Chip Cookies with Walnuts and Hazelnuts
(Adapted from Didi Emmons’ Entertaining for a Veggie Planet)
Makes 6-7 dozen

1 cup each chopped walnuts and skinned or blanched hazelnuts
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (2 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
2 large eggs
12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 F.  Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and toast until golden, approximately 5 minutes.  Remove and let cool.

In the bowl of stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter and sugars until very light and fluffy.   Scrape down the sides and beat in the salt and vanilla.  Beat in the eggs one at a time, incorporating the first fully before adding the second.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour and baking soda.  With the mixer on low, stir in the flour and soda until just incorporated, then repeat with the nuts and chocolate.  Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight, and preferably 24 hours.

Preheat the oven to 350 F again, and line two or more baking sheets with parchment paper.  Scoop rounded tablespoons of the dough with a cookie scoop or large spoon onto the sheets, spacing at least 2 inches apart.  If desired, sprinkle lightly with additional sea salt.  Bake each batch 8 minutes, until golden, then cool on the sheet for 5 minutes.  Remove to a wire rack to cool.

Store in an airtight container.

Notes:

I like Ghirardelli double chocolate chips, which at 60% cacao solids are darker and deeper than regular semisweet chips.  Guittard’s chips are also good.  Naturally, if you want to go with Valrhona or Callebaut or another premium selection, I wouldn’t dream of stopping you, although in my experience there’s a point of diminishing returns with chocolate chip cookies.

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One for the Road

All packed and ready to go.

My house is a hollow wreck of a corpse.  Everything we want to keep but won’t need for the next year has been packed and put in storage, and almost all the furniture we don’t want to keep has been sold off.  A handful of boxes full of winter clothes and other need-but-not-immediately items have been shipped on the slow and cheap to the new place.  Tomorrow His Lordship, the Monster and I will stuff all our can’t-live-withouts into the car and head for the other coast at a brisk but not breakneck pace.

There is absolutely no reason why I should have been baking Monday night.  I no longer have coworkers to bake for.  I most certainly have not been inviting people over for dinner.  There is no shortage of other chores I could have been tackling.

And yet I made a full batch of biscotti, including skinning the hazelnuts. I told myself I still had things in my pantry I would lament throwing away, and that every road trip should be accompanied by a homemade treat to make up for the less-than-optimal meals along the way.  But the truth is that I’m not a practical person by nature, and beneath all that pretense was the impulse to push back at the forces swirling around me.

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Linzer Torte for the Lazy

It’s been about a billion degrees Fahrenheit with equivalent levels of humidity here, so it’s not the ideal time to be baking. Still, expectations have been created at the office for Monday morning treats, and a friend was throwing a wine tasting dinner and had asked us to bring dessert, so the oven was going to have to come on. To add a further degree of challenge, one of the guests at the dinner doesn’t eat eggs. Oh, and I also had a work commitment on Sunday.

In considering what dessert items might be relatively quick and easy, not too oven-intensive, and egg-free, I thought of a favorite and versatile base recipe for Mexican wedding cookies from the San Francisco Chronicle, clipped out and pasted into the three-ring binder that is my own personal relic of those quaint old pre-web-archive dinosaurs-roaming-the-earth days. (God, I don’t miss those days. I was not cut out for scrapbooking, as the disastrous state of that binder explosively testifies. Just try picking it up without two dozen unanchored bits of yellowing newsprint flopping out in all directions.)

The great thing about this recipe, despite the fabulous melting texture and not-too-sugary simplicity, is that you can vary the nuts according to your whim and shape it into any number of forms. Since I’ve had a random craving for Linzer Torte lately, I decided to modify the recipe in that general direction by using almonds, adding the traditional spices and lemon zest, and pushing a thumbprint hollow into each cookie that could be filled with raspberry jam after baking and before the final sprinkling of powdered sugar.

I ended up making two separate batches, because there weren’t enough leftovers after the dinner to take in on Monday. For the second batch, I experimented further to see if a combination of almonds and hazelnuts would be an improvement over almonds alone. Having run out of raspberry jam, I also substituted boysenberry.

Both batches had all the charm of the Austrian classic and were eagerly received by their intended consumers, but I think the first batch was just that bit better. I preferred the more traditional tartness of the raspberry jam, as well as the additional rustic texture from the seeds. The hazelnuts neither helped nor hurt the taste, but I did get a more refined cookie by using sliced almonds in the first than from the whole nuts in the second. The smaller, more uniform slices offered more surface area for toasting, and also gave me a head start on a very fine and even grind. The nut meal made from whole nuts was a rougher mixture of powder and slightly gritty sand. The difference is not great enough to merit a special trip to the store if you have whole almonds in the house, but do try it with sliced almonds if you’re starting from scratch or want the best possible result.

A couple of notes on methodology:

Despite the name, I find that the bowl of a 1/4 teaspoon measure is a much better tool for shaping the crater than your thumb. The hollow will be perfectly round and even, and you won’t be left digging dough from under your nails.

Also, if you don’t bake immediately after mixing, try not to use the dough when it’s too cold, since that will promote cracking along the edges. This not only makes for a less attractive cookie, but also causes fissures in the hollow that can allow jam to flow out the caldera like lava streams oozing down Kilauea’s slopes. The dough should be at room temperature, not straight from the fridge but not soft and oily either.

Linzer Thumbprints
Makes 50 cookies

4 ounces sliced almonds (1 1/4 cups), or two ounces each whole almonds and hazelnuts (just under 1 cup)
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar, plus extra for dusting
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon each ground cloves and mace
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla
Grated zest of one lemon, approximately 1 teaspoon

1 cup jam of choice, preferably raspberry
1 teaspoon lemon juice

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Toast the nuts on a cookie sheet until fragrant, approximately 10-15 minutes. If using sliced almonds, stir periodically to ensure even browning, and remove from oven as soon as they are pale golden brown. If using a mixture of almonds and hazelnuts, remove from oven when the skins on the hazelnuts have darkened and cracked, and the meat peeking through is starting to turn gold. Set aside to cool briefly and, if desired, rub off some of the bitter hazelnut skins.

Sift the flour, salt and spices together in a small bowl.

In a food processor, blend the toasted nuts with 1/4 cup of confectioner’s sugar and 1 tablespoon of granulated sugar until finely ground. Do not overprocess or the nuts will become oily and start to produce a nut butter.

In a mixer, cream the butter and remaining confectioner’s and granulated sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla, then the lemon zest. Reduce speed to low and mix in the nut mixture, then the flour mixture, until combined.

Using a small scoop or a tablespoon measure, form balls 1 to 1 1/2 inch around and place 1/2 inch apart on parchment-lined sheets. Using the back of a 1/4 teaspoon measure or, if you really prefer, your thumb, gently make an indentation in each cookie, pushing halfway down to the surface of the sheet.

Bake 13-15 minutes, until just starting to brown. Remove to racks to cool completely.

To serve, mix lemon juice into the jam to brighten the flavor slightly, and fill each crater with the jam. Dust the filled cookies with a light coating of additional powdered sugar before serving.

Unfilled but dusted with powdered sugar, these will keep very well in an airtight container for days, and their flavor will even improve a little. If you’re planning on traveling with them, I suggest you take the cookies and the jam in separate containers and fill them on site before serving. Keeping the filled cookies from sliding around, flipping over or sticking to each other and smearing jam everywhere is more of an engineering challenge than you probably want to tackle.

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Sunday Night Sweets Blogging: Opera Cupcakes

We’re woefully overdue for another Sunday night sweets entry. It isn’t that I haven’t been baking; it’s just that life has been interfering with blogging time again. The hazelnut chocolate chip cookies I made two weeks ago were a bit disappointing and not worth posting about yet, but I’ll try to find time to write up last week’s almond-caramel sandwich cookies sometime soon, since they came out rather well.

In the meantime, tonight’s mood was in the cake direction. The foibles of my crappy oven aside, I’ve been really happy since I started using Shirley Corriher’s recipe for Basic Moist Sweet Cake from Cookwise for cupcakes. The method is a bit quirky, since you blend the flour and the fat together first, then add the liquid ingredients, but the end product is wonderfully moist, tender, and velvety. I think it might actually work better as cupcakes, since the crumb is so delicate and melting that I can’t imagine it holding up particularly well to frosting or slicing as a full-sized cake. As it is, you really need to double-line the muffin cups, or use the stiff mini-panettone molds I used this time, to give the cakes enough support to stand up once you unmold them; otherwise, they just spread and deform in the liners.

Besides the fantastic texture, the other advantage of this recipe is that you can use any oil you like, but nut oils, if you have them, give you an incredibly flavorful end product. Nearly every time I’ve made this recipe, I’ve used macadamia oil, which gives the basic yellow cake a wonderfully exotic, round, full flavor. This time, since I’m out of the macadamia, I used hazelnut, which inspired me to go with the coffee-chocolate combination of the classic Opera Cake when it came time to frost. Having both a coffee buttercream and a ganache glaze is probably overkill for cupcakes, but I couldn’t decide on one or the other, and I really do love the combination of chocolate, coffee, and nuts.

I’m not entirely happy with the decoration here, because the coffee beans are too small and too dark to make any impact against the ganache. Next time I’d probably use the half-cup of leftover buttercream to pipe rosettes on top of the ganache and then top with the coffee bean, or perhaps a chocolate-covered espresso bean. I’m not going to knock myself out over aesthetics this late on a Sunday, though, and anyway, you really can’t argue with the taste.

Opera Cupcakes
Makes 20-24 cupcakes

Hazelnut Cakes
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
6 tablespoons plus 2 tablespoons buttermilk (1/2 cup total)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter
1/3 cup hazelnut oil (or other nut oil, or mild vegetable oil)

Leave eggs, buttermilk and butter out at room temperature until butter has softened.

Place shelf in lower third of oven, and preheat to 350. Set 20 mini panettone molds on a baking sheet, or line two muffin trays with liners.

Sir the eggs, yolks, 6 tablespoons buttermilk and vanilla together in a liquid measuring cup.

In the bowl of a standing mixer, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, and mix on low speed for 30 seconds. Add the butter, oil and remaining 2 tablespoons butermilk, and mix on low until the dry ingredients are moistened. Increase to medium and beat for 1 1/2 minutes, until light. Add the liquid ingredients, one third at a time, beating for 20 seconds between additions.

Fill the molds or muffin cups halfway and bake until golden and a tester comes out clean,
approximately 20-25 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit on baking sheet or in muffin trays for ten minutes before removing to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Coffee Buttercream
3 cups powdered sugar
1 cup (2 sticks) butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons instant espresso powder, dissolved in 1/4 cup hot water
1 to 2 tablespoons whipping cream

In a standing mixer, mix the sugar and butter on low speed until well blended, then increase speed to medium and beat for another 3 minutes, until light and fluffy.

Add vanilla, dissolved espresso and cream and continue to beat on medium speed for 1 minute more, adding more cream if needed for spreading consistency.

Once the cupcakes have completely cooled, spread 2-3 tablespoons of buttercream over the cakes, creating as smooth and level a surface as possible and leaving at least 1/4 inch of space between the buttercream and the top of the mold/liner for the ganache layer. Refrigerate the frosted cupcakes in an airtight container until the buttercream has firmed.

Ganache
150 grams heavy cream
150 grams dark chocolate, chopped fine
2 tablespoons Lyle’s Golden Syrup (or corn syrup)

Heat the cream in a liquid measuring cup in a microwave until near boiling, approximately 1-2 minutes. Add the chocolate and whisk thoroughly, until chocolate has dissolved and the mixture is smooth. Whisk in the syrup.

Pour 1-2 tablespoons of the ganache over the frosted cupcakes, tilting the cupcakes to swirl the ganache over the surface and ensure even coverage of the buttercream layer. (Do not touch the ganache or try to spread it with a spatula or other utensil, as it will mar the shiny surface of the end product.) If desired, add a coffee bean or chocolate covered espresso bean as garnish.

Return to the refrigerator in a covered container until the ganache has set.

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