super gooey chocolate drops
LG—I had an attack of the sweet tooth. This doesn’t happen too often. Enjoy!
This is one of the tastiest sweets recipes I have ever come across. Reading the recipe alone, I suspected it was a stand-out. Eating a just-out-of-the-oven cookie, and I knew. These extra rich and chocolatey cookies straddle the line between cookie and brownie. And that’s a fine place to be.
the ingredients
Ingredients—recipe from FoodNetwork Kitchens
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
4 ounces unsweetened chocolate, chopped
4 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup packed light brown sugar
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs
2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup natural cocoa powder, such as Hershey’s or Scharffen Berger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
11 ounces (1 bag) semisweet chocolate chunks
1 cup dried cherries. optional (I omitted the $10/bag dried cherries I’m sad to say)
First things first: preheat the oven to 325° and position the oven rack in the middle. I was working with just one cookie sheet. If you’re using two or three, you can position the oven racks in the top third and bottom third.
A quick tip I’ve learned for cooling a baking sheet: just run it under cool water for about…eh…10 seconds. That takes most of the heat away so that when you reload the baking sheet with a new batch of cookie dough, they don’t start cooking immediately.
Break up the chocolate bars and place them along with the stick of butter into a microwave safe bowl. I use a Pyrex pitcher. Zap until melted. I usually start with about a minute, and then do 30 seconds more and stir, 30 seconds more and stir, etc. until smooth.
batter is lookin good
Add the brown sugar, granulated sugar and vanilla to the melted chocolate and butter. Then add the eggs and buttermilk.
wowsah
For the dry ingredients, just combine—flour, cocoa, cinnamon, salt. Add the dry ingredients gradually to the wet. Once combined, throw in the chocolate chips (and though I omitted the cherries, this is when you add them, too. You could also add walnuts, or a number of other things).
Then, on a parchment-lined baking sheet, scoop tablespoon-sized heaps of batter. Allow a couple of inches between. Then bake 12-15 minutes. I try to take the cookies out on the earlier side so they remained like a fudge brownie. Allow the cookies to cool for about 5 minutes on a rack. You may need to allow them to set on the baking sheet before you attempt to move them. They may fall apart.
you better have milk in the fridge
I would have liked to splurge on the dried cherries for this recipe, but I simply couldn’t justify the cost. Nevertheless, these cookies are incredible. The cinnamon is an ingenious addition. It provides a surprising accent to the chocolate, much the same way that coffee flavor enhances chocolate.
It’s worth it to make these cookies from scratch—especially since they’re drop cookies that don’t have to be rolled out and sliced perfectly. And if you dare and can stand to wait the extra 15 seconds, zap a couple of cookies in the microwave before devouring.
