Archive for: chocolate chip
Fresh cranberries can be a great ingredient to work with, and not just when you want to make cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving dinner. The berries have a vivid red color and a bright, tart flavor that goes well with all kinds of different flavors, from chocolate to toasted coconut. People don’t seem to reach for cranberries as often as blueberries, raspberries and other popular berries, but I definitely try to take advantage of fresh cranberries in the fall and winter when they’re widely available.
Double Chocolate Chip Cranberry Bread is a great recipe for fans of chocolate and cranberries. The bread has a good chocolate flavor, a soft and slightly cake-like crumb, and plenty of zesty cranberries scattered throughout to liven up each bite. There are also a generous number of chocolate chips in this bread, so you get a double dose of chocolate. This is a great bread to serve at a brunch with coffee, but it is so simple to put together that it is a good recipe to make without a special occasion just to enjoy at home.
This bread keeps well for several days when stored in an airtight container. It is very good served at room temperature, but becomes quite decadent when you warm up a slice slightly (10 seconds or so in the microwave is usually enough) because the chocolate chips become melted and the bread turns into a rich dessert! I prefer using fresh cranberries in this bread when I have them, but frozen berries will work too. Frozen berries should not be defrosted before adding them into the recipe and the bread may need an extra minute or two in the oven.
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This is a cookie that will appease both peanut butter lovers and chocolate chip fans: a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie. You can certainly throw a handful of chocolate chips into just about any peanut butter cookie dough (or dip the cookies in chocolate!) to get this flavor combination, but peanut butter cookies and chocolate chip cookies have different textures to them and this cookie delivers something encompasses elements of both types.
The cookies are big and tender, with a hint of crispiness on the edges and a slight chewiness to them that is more like a chocolate chip cookie than a straight peanut butter one. They don’t have an overly strong peanut butter flavor to them and I like to use crunchy peanut butter to get the addition of little pieces of peanut in the finished cookies. Smooth peanut butter will work just as well. I used a national brand (JIF, to be specific) but these cookies should work out well with natural peanut butter, too. If you are using unsalted peanut butter, you may want to increase the salt in the cookies by 1/4 teaspoon to highlight the peanut butter flavor a bit more.
These cookies keep very well and are a great change of pace from your average peanut butter cookie. I like dark chocolate chips in these, but milk chocolate chips also really compliment the peanut butter flavor of the cookies and will sweeten things up just a little bit. To really take a batch of these cookies over-the-top with peanut butter and chocolate, keep an eye out for mini peanut butter cups (Trader Joe’s carries them) and mix those in along with the chocolate chips.
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It is fun to experiment with different types of cookies, cakes and other baked goods but when it comes down to it, it has hard to beat a classic chocolate chip cookie. The combination of butter, sugar and chocolate all comes together in just the perfect proportions to make a perfectly satisfying treat. I confess that I will go for months at a time without baking a batch of chocolate chip cookies because they’re something of a stand-by recipe that doesn’t always jump out at me – but when I catch myself in a lapse like this, they always go straight to the top of my “to-bake” list. A fresh-from-the-oven chocolate chip cookie really can’t be beat.
These are actually Brown Sugar Chocolate Chunk Cookies. Chocolate chunks – I used Callebaut semisweet this time around – are slightly larger than chocolate chips and seem to give a little more chocolate flavor, as well as a slightly more rustic look, to the cookies. I use only brown sugar in these cookies, which gives them a deeper flavor. Golden brown sugar or light brown sugar is going to give your cookies a note of honey, while dark brown sugar will lend a hint of molasses. Both types of sugar will produce great results.
These cookies are crisp around the edges and chewy in the middle. You can underbake them by a minute to make them even chewier, or add an addition two minutes to turn them into much crisper cookies. Any way you bake them, you’ll get a delicious and well balanced cookie with flavors of brown sugar, vanilla, butter and lots of chocolate. Make sure to eat one fresh from the oven!
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I have to admit that pecans are probably my favorite nut to put into a cookie, judging by the fact that I use them more than any other nut, but I can go for anything from walnuts to macadamias to pistachios. This time around, I decided to use hazelnuts to add some crunch to a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Hazelnuts and chocolate make a great combination – as evidenced by the popularity of Nutella – and hazelnuts tend to be a little bit crunchier than some other nuts because they’re a little less buttery and tender on their own.
I used lightly toasted, whole hazelnuts for this recipe, so they had a nice nutty flavor going into the cookies. Some recipes that use hazelnuts call for their skins to be removed first, but that is not necessary for these casual cookies because flecks of brown hazelnut skin won’t stand out (or look bad, even if they do) against the golden brown cookies. To further emphasize the hazelnut flavor in these, I also incorporated a little bit of Nutella into the cookie dough.
The cookies have a crisp edge and a slightly chewy center to them. When they are fresh from the oven, you can really get a great Nutella flavor from both the small amount of Nutella in the dough and the warm chocolate surrounding the hazelnuts. They retain their chewiness after they’ve cooled and store, in an airtight container, well for a couple of days.
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Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies are great because they deliver all the chocolate and all the buttery flavor of a regular chocolate chip cookie, with a little bit more texture and a delicious oaty, nutty flavor on top. When you toast nuts, you bring out their nuttiness even more, and this same thing works on oats. So, I added some toasted, sweetened granola right into this batch of cookies where I might have otherwise just used oatmeal. I got cookies that delivered even more flavor than before.
The cookies are thick and seem hearty, because of the granola. They are slightly chewy and crisp on the outside. You can definitely taste the flavors from the granola, whether yours is sweetened with maple syrup, honey or sugar, in the cookies, too.
I just used a plain granola (Cascadian Farms Organic Oats and Honey, to be specific), without any added nuts or dried fruits, so that I could really find the granola flavor in the finished cookies. I added in chocolate chips and chopped, toasted pecans separately. You can use just about any type of granola you like in these, whether it has nuts or dried fruits already added. The only thing you need to do to prep your granola is to chop it into small pieces – chocolate chip or almond sized clusters – before mixing it in so that you get an even distribution of granola throughout the cookies.
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