Archive for: chocolate chip cookies
These Cocoa Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies are some of the easiest peanut butter cookies that you’ll ever make. They’re based on my Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies and use no flour or butter in them, unlike regular peanut butter cookies, and are primarily made with peanut butter, eggs and sugar. The first time you try them, you might be a bit skeptical about how they’ll work, but I can assure you that this is an easy recipe that you’ll find yourself returning to again and again.
This variation on the basic flourless peanut butter cookies adds a little bit of chocolate into the mix. I used unsweetened cocoa powder to lend some chocolate flavor to the peanut butter, giving them a peanut butter cup-like flavor – and the addition of a generous amount of chocolate chips doesn’t hurt either! The cookies are more tender than a regular peanut butter cookie but still have a nice chewiness to them. Under baking them slightly will give you a chewier finished product, and letting them go an extra minute or two will produce a crisper cookie.
I like to use smooth peanut butter in these cookies, but crunchy peanut butter can be used instead if that is what you have on hand. The little pieces of peanut add nice crispy elements to the cookies, and work well with the chocolate chips. The cookies keep very well and can be stored in an airtight container for several days after baking.
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Semisweet chocolate chips are the default mix-in for most chocolate chip cookie recipes. Over the past several years, consumers have seen a huge increase in the variety of chocolate chips (and chocolate chunks) available at the grocery store as options for baking. One question I get asked frequently is whether it is ok to substitute one type of chocolate chips for another, and what difference it will make in the final recipe.
The short answer is that it is perfectly fine to substitute one type of chocolate chips for another in a recipe that calls for them. This is true for cookies, cakes, brownies and other recipes that call for mixing-in a quantity of chocolate chips. Most recipes call for semisweet chocolate by default, as those are still the most common type of chocolate chip, but some will make recommendations for milk or dark chocolate chips based on what the recipe author thinks tastes best in that recipe.
All chocolate is made up of cocoa solids – cocoa butter and cocoa powder – and typically includes sugar, an emulsifier and vanilla. Milk chocolate has milk solids added to it as well, while dark chocolate does not. Semisweet chocolate is not strictly defined (there is no exact amount of sugar to be called “semisweet”, though it generally means no more than 50% of the mass of the chocolate is sugar as opposed to “sweet” chocolates, where there is even more sugar) but it is essentially dark chocolate because it does not contain milk solids. Semisweet chocolates are not typically very sweet, but they are sweeter, not as intensely flavored and lack the bitter notes that some “ultra-dark” chocolates have. Semisweet chocolate gives a balanced flavor to most chocolate chip cookie recipes, adding just the right amount of sweetness and chocolate flavor. A darker chocolate, with more bitter cocoa notes than semisweet, will have a stronger presence in a cookie or cake and may overwhelm some of the subtle flavors in that recipe. Milk chocolate is typically much sweeter than either of these and can actually taste too sweet in a cookie or cake, as it does not add enough contrasting chocolate flavor.
You can never go wrong with a good chocolate chip cookie, and as much as I enjoy making more elaborate baked goods like creme brulees and homemade cinnamon rolls, I will always come back to the classic chocolate chip cookie from time to time. Chocolate chip cookies can be crispy, chewy, cakey or somewhere in between. Regardless of what type of chocolate chip cookie you’re eating, they should always be buttery, packed full of chocolate chips and hopelessly addictive.
I like to call these Really Good Chocolate Chip Cookies because they are exactly that: really good. The cookies get a wonderful flavor from butter, brown sugar and a healthy dose of vanilla extract. A hint of extra salt in the cookie dough gives them their addictive quality (without making them seem salty) and offsets the generous amount of sugar in the cookie dough. They’re tender and chewy, and they stay chewy for several days after baking when stored in an airtight container. These are definitely some of my favorite chocolate chip cookies, and they are always a crowd pleaser.
These are fairly large chocolate chip cookies and I prefer to use fairly large chocolate chips in them for the best results. In this particular batch, I actually used See’s Candies huge Semisweet Chocolate Chips in these. Guittard’s chocolate chips tend to be on the larger side, as well. Alternatively, you can also cut up chocolate bars into coarse chunks and stir those in instead of chocolate chips. I like classic semisweet chips in my cookies, but bittersweet chocolate and even dark chocolate will also make excellent cookies.
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Coffee and cookies is a combination that is just as good as milk and cookies, but slightly more adult. These Chocolate-Drizzled Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies are a coffee-laced twist on classic chocolate chip cookies, made by adding a homemade espresso extract – instant espresso powder and water – to the cookie batter for a coffee flavor. The cookies are packed with dark chocolate chips and drizzled with dark chocolate to give them an elegant finished look on top of making them a great way to satisfy a chocolate craving.
The coffee kick in this otherwise fairly standard cookie dough comes from the homemade espresso extract I mentioned above. This mixture has an intense flavor and almost seems too strong when taken on its own, but when combined with the sweet, buttery cookie dough and the chocolate, it all balances out very well. The cookies are slightly chewy, with a good coffee flavor that just manages to not be overwhelmed by all the chocolate chips. The chocolate drizzle is optional, but is a nice touch that will set these apart from other cookies.
I like to work with instant espresso powder when I’m baking, because it lends a strong coffee flavor to cakes and other baked goods and is easy to incorporate, both as a powder or when reconstituted with a small amount of water. Instant espresso powder is definitely going to give you the best flavor in this recipe and it is available at many regular grocery stores. Specialty food and baking stores will stock intense coffee extract, which makes a good substitution for the instant espresso powder. After those two options, I would opt for a high quality instant coffee like Starbucks Via that will also impart strong coffee flavor over a regular instant coffee, though doubling the amount of traditional instant coffee will enhance the coffee flavor if that is what you have to work with.
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Monster Cookies are the perfect cookie to make when you can’t decide what flavor you’re in the mood for. These cookies offer three flavors in one: peanut butter, chocolate chip and spicy dark chocolate. All three doughs work well together, but have distinctive enough appearances and flavors that they make for an unusually good – and unusually good looking – cookie.
The vanilla chocolate chip dough is a pretty normal chocolate chip cookie dough that is loaded with chocolate chips. The peanut butter dough calls for crunchy peanut butter and a handful of salted peanuts to be added. I like to add some peanut butter chips to drive home the peanut butter flavor even more. The dark chocolate cookie dough has chopped dark chocolate in the dough and actually has cayenne pepper in it, which gives it a spicy finish. It’s not too spicy, but it does have some heat to it that makes it really stand out from the other flavors in these monster cookies.
The cookies are crisp on the outside and chewy in the center, just as you would want a chocolate chip cookie to be, even though these are anything but your standard cookie.
I like these cookies for Halloween because when you make them the way I did here, with the dark chocolate cookie dough in the center, the cookies turn out looking like giant monster eyes! Of course, you can assemble the three cookie doughs in any in any order you want, but I do recommend keeping them all separate (as opposed to swirling them together) so that you can get the full flavor of each cookie dough. I scoop up the doughs on a large spoon, one after another. For even easier assembly, form small balls of each dough separately and press them together before placing them on the baking sheet.
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