Valentine’s Day is once again drawing near. For many, this is an occasion for an
extravagant chocolate dessert. I admit
that I’m not a fan of big, rich chocolate desserts…. Desserts with names that include modifiers
like “death by”, “outrageous”, “oblivion”,
“insanity”, “wicked”, “indulgence”, etc.….
are totally unappealing to me. If
I’m going to eat a chocolate dessert, I want it to be deeply chocolate…not too
sweet….and preferably served in small portions.
To me the perfect chocolate
dessert is a creamy, perfect little pot de crème… a small sliver of a rich chocolate tart… an elegant soufflé cake… a miniature brownie square… or one or two of the chocolate truffle cookies
I’m posting today.
These little cookies might not look very special, but you should
not let their plain and demure appearance fool you into thinking that they are
plain and demure when it comes to taste. Just like the chocolate truffle after which
they are named, these dark and rather unpromising looking lumps pack a wonderfully
deep chocolate punch. If you love
chocolate, these cookies will probably become a favorite.
I found the recipe for these cookies in a December issue of Gourmet magazine many years ago. I have
been teaching them in one of my Christmas cookie classes for almost as long. They are so special that I have kept them in
the class even though the forming of the cookies is a bit of a tedious process. The original directions simply instruct you to
chill the dough until it is firm and then to use dampened hands to roll heaping teaspoons of dough into balls.
This is not as easy as it sounds.
The chilled dough is quite firm…and contains hard chocolate chips…so it
is difficult to portion uniformly. Rolling
the portioned dough into balls requires that you regularly rinse your hands to
clean off the dough that adheres amazingly well to your palms…despite the fact
that they are damp. Furthermore, if your
hands are too damp, the dough slips and slides and resists forming a ball…if
your hands aren’t wet enough, the dough sticks to your hands to the point of
being unmanageable.
It was not until this year that I came up with a better way to
portion and form these cookies. I
discovered the new method entirely by accident.
In the past I have always just followed the directions in the recipe to
chill the dough—which, when freshly made, is really more like a cake batter than
a cookie dough—right away. For some
reason when I made the dough this past Christmas, instead of immediately
pouring it into a clean container and transferring it to the refrigerator, I
left it in the mixing bowl on the counter for a few moments while I finished up
a few other tasks. When I returned to it, I discovered that at a
cool room temperature (68°F) the dough had set up so that it was soft and
mounding and held its shape when scooped.
So, instead of chilling the dough, I grabbed my cookie scoop and scooped
the batter into mounds on a parchment lined sheet. I then chilled the sheet pan of scooped
dough. Once the scooped cookies were
firm enough to handle, it was super easy to roll them into smooth little balls
(using lightly dampened hands) and bake them.
As I have thought about it, this method should have been obvious to
me from the beginning. The dough is made
with melted butter and a large quantity of melted chocolate. Since both of these substances are solid at
room temperature, it makes sense that they would firm up rather quickly at room
temperature….particularly when combined with other, cooler, ingredients.
Since Christmas I have been wondering if the dough could simply be
scooped and baked right away (without the chilling step). I had a little extra time this weekend….and my "cookie jar" was bare….so I decided to give it a try. To my delight, I discovered that it works
beautifully this way. The exterior of
the cookies that are scooped and baked immediately are a little rough in
comparison with those that are chilled and rolled, but they have the same moist
and dense interior. How you choose to
prepare them will depend on your time frame (do you need them for a dessert
tonight?) and the setting in which they will be consumed. When making this for a Christmas cookie
platter…or as part of a dessert tray…and a neat, perfectly round cookie is the
goal, it would be best to chill and roll them before baking them.
I should mention that these cookies are especially delicious when
consumed within a few hours of baking.
At this point, the chocolate chips are still pleasantly soft. With this in mind, my next experiment with
these cookies will be to scoop the dough, chill it, roll it into balls and then
freeze the unbaked balls of dough. This
will then allow me to bake only a few at a time…making it possible to enjoy a
small portion of truly delicious chocolate….any time the mood strikes.
Chocolate
Truffle Cookies
4 oz.
unsweetened chocolate, chopped
6 T. (3 oz.) unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
2 c. (12 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided
1/2 c. (2 oz.) all-purpose flour
2 T. (10 g.) unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch-processed)
1/4 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1 c. sugar
3 eggs
1 1/2 t. vanilla
Melt the unsweetened chocolate, butter and half of the
chocolate chips in a heavy saucepan over very low heat (or in the microwave in
a microwave safe bowl), stirring occasionally.
Set aside to cool.
Combine the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Set aside.
Using a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, beat
together the sugar, eggs and vanilla until pale and very fluffy (about 2
minutes at high speed).
Mix in the
melted chocolate mixture. Sift the dry
ingredients into the bowl and fold until just combined. Stir in the remaining chips. Let stand at room temperature until the
mixture sets up enough to be scooped and hold a mounded shape. If your kitchen is cool…and your eggs were
refrigerator cold…this will only take a few minutes.
Portion the dough using a small cookie scoop (see
note). Scrape the scoop against the bowl
to make level, evenly sized scoops.
Arrange the scoops of dough on a parchment lined baking sheet, spacing 1
1/2 inches apart.
Bake in a 350° oven
until puffed and just set—do not over bake!
The cookies are done when the dough has lost its wet shine and the
cookies have puffed slightly. Start
checking at about 7 minutes.
Immediately slide the parchment off of the
baking sheet and onto wire racks to let the cookies cool completely.
Makes 4 to 6 dozen—depending on the size of
your scoop.
Notes:
- I make these cookies with Ghirardelli unsweetened (100 %)…it comes in convenient 4 oz. bars, Ghirardelli semi-sweet chips (the 60% are a bit too strong in this cookie), and Hershey’s Cocoa. But any good brand of chocolate will work.
- A cookie scoop with a capacity of 2 teaspoons will produce 6 dozen cookies and tablespoon-sized scoop will produce 4 dozen. I like to make smaller cookies at Christmas when they will be part of a large platter of many different cookies…and the larger size during the rest of the year when I’m only making one kind of cookie (for my own “cookie jar”, for example)
- The cookies may be scooped and baked right away, or scooped, chilled and then rolled into smooth balls once the dough is firm enough to handle. If chilling the dough, place all of the scooped dough onto a single parchment-lined cookie sheet. It’s OK for the cookies to be quite close together since they will not be baked on the sheet they are chilled on. Bake the chilled dough exactly as you would the freshly scooped dough.
(Recipe adapted
from Gourmet, December 2000)
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