OK--finally here's the post on those ridiculous chocolate cookies.
***WARNING***
Do not make these cookies unless you're really serious. I mean, really. Don't say I didn't warn you. They are stupidly rich and overwhelmingly chocolate-y. If you are brave enough, here's the recipe. I got this recipe from my wanderings on the internet--it looked Ok so I copied it down. I see from my printout that this recipe is adapted (by whom, I did not record, sorry!) from Brown Eyed Baker (Google her blog--you should find her, I think). She calls them Chocolate Espresso Cookies, but my kids named them Death By Chocolate. I think that name fits much, much better. And, yeah, I've adapted it somewhat too. After all, that's what happens to recipes, isn't it? Sometimes my internet recipes don't work out (the "best muffin recipe ever" I tried recently comes to mind; what a disappointment that was) but this one is a keeper for the permanent file. When cooled, they retain a lovely velvety, yet completely baked center that just melts in your mouth. And then there's all that chocolate accentuated by the espresso.
yields ca. 3 dozen
16 oz. bittersweet* chocolate, chopped
4 tbsp butter
4 eggs
1 1/3 cups sugar
1 tsp vanilla sugar or extract
1/2 cup AP flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp espresso powder
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 3 or 4 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler, stirring occasionally, until all chocolate and butter is melted and smooth. Here's my chocolate to start with:
And here's what it looks like when its all melted and lovely. While that's melting, combine the eggs, vanilla and sugar in a large bowl and set aside.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and espresso powder. Slowly beat the chocolate and butter into the egg mixture until well combined. Gradually beat in the flour mixture until a smooth batter forms. Stir in chocolate chips.
The batter will be pretty runny/goopy. Drop by tablespoons of batter on to the parchment lined cookie sheet. You can see mine there to the left. And, yes, the parchment is necessary. You can get some somewhere in the vicinity of the wax paper and aluminum foil in your local grocery story. At least, that's where my local store keeps it.
Bake for 8-10 minutes or until they are firm on the outside. Remove from oven and let cool for 5 minutes then remove to a cooling rack with a spatula. You can eat them warm for the most intense chocolate fix. Or let them cool and mellow if you are more faint of heart. Either way, pour yourself a BIG glass of milk, sit down and take it slow. One cookie to start, maybe a second.
* Both times I made this recipe I did not have the full 16 oz. of bittersweet chocolate. As my google search told me, you can substitute semisweet and unsweetened chocolate. You will lose some depth of chocolate flavor but its doable. Of course, if you substitute to all unsweetened chocolate, your cookies will not be sweet enough so balance some semi sweet in there too. This last time I had 12 oz of bittersweet (you can see the 3 4 oz. bars of Ghirardelli 60% bittersweet chocolate) 2 oz of Baker's unsweetened chocolate and 2 oz Baker's semi-sweetened chocolate.
So...you know I save all sorts of odds and ends that catch my eye, right? I've posted previously about my quilts that featured (among other things) fortune cookie fortunes, vintage buttons, snaps, hook and eyes, rubber o-rings... well, the list goes on and on (just wait for my bread twist-tie piece!)
I got to have a lot of fun picking out the bead combinations that went with each top keeping up the rainbow vibe. An added bonus is the nice little jingly sound this necklace makes at every movement. I think I'll make another one, too!
My mom got this recipe out of the local newspaper maybe 50 years ago, more or less. They're simple and good and full of butter. Yum!
I took the day off work today--my day job that is! But I did work all day on finishing up a bunch of crafts, taking pictures of them and uploading them to my new etsy store. So what was I up to to with all of those maps and butterflies???
How cool is that?
and even a real Morpho butterfly I had under glass. (Here's a link if you're interested in getting your own iridescent blue Morpho; the frame will be different from mine, but its the same famous South American beauty: Mounted Blue Morpho Butterfly - Displayed in Framed Acrylic Case 7" x 7" x 2"
) Of course, in order to get both halves of my butterfly templates symmetrical I simply did the fold-in-half trick that we all learned in grade school when it was time to cut out hearts for Valentine's day. :)
Those resources did the trick, and, as you can see, I cut out several pleasing and biologically accurate butterfly shapes (after a couple of false starts). I wanted them oversized compared to real butterflies, but still clearly recognizable and not stylized at all. I wanted to evoke a real butterfly collection, like the one seen here in this nice pic by Mike Beauregard on Wikimedia http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_butterfly_collection.jpg
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 3 or 4 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler, stirring occasionally, until all chocolate and butter is melted and smooth. Here's my chocolate to start with:
Here's a close up of the stitches. I really don't know the name of the stitches since I'm not a big crocheter and have never learned to follow crochet directions. But I'm being neat and consistent so I figure that counts as much here as it does in knitting.
as seen here. So I'm using size 8 needles. The combination of those two means that this is knitting up FAST! This stuff is awesome--so soft and it knits up fast (being bulky and all). And its machine washable and dryable; a must with all baby items.
