Issue #95: The Cookie Monster in All of Us

Fudgy, Chewy, and Chocolatey, These Double-Chocolate Brownie Cookies Are Great Every Which Way: As Written, But Also Gluten Free, Pareve, and Even Pesadich!

Greetings all. It’s an auspicious time of year, when three of the world’s most important religious holidays—Ramadan, Passover, and Easter—converge amid flashes of hope brought by spring as it pokes through the winter drear. But the news from around the world is grim enough to dampen any sense of celebration. Historic protests in Israel, debilitating strikes in France and Germany, mass shootings in American schools, just another week in March. Perhaps what we all need is to curl up under a blanket with a plate of chocolatey cookies and a tall glass of milk. —Mitchell

Cookie preference is a personal matter. Crisp or chewy, fudgy or cakey, hard or soft. There are so many variables and each has its fans. I’ve always thought the title and organizing principle of Alice Medrich’s cookie book, Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy, was genius for getting to the heart of the matter right off the bat.

What’s more, small adjustments in cookie preparation, such as adding or subtracting ingredients, variations in temperature, variable moisture or protein content of ingredients, alternative mixing methods, and different resting times, can have rather dramatic effects on the final results. As you know, I like to mess with my recipes. But when it comes to cookies, if I find a recipe I like, I generally leave well enough alone.

There is almost always a jar of whole-wheat Digestives on our counter these days.

It will likely come as no surprise that Nate and I have different tastes in cookies. I like mine hard, dry, and crumbly, not too sweet, the kind of biscotti that could break a tooth, that you have to dunk in coffee in order to be able to swallow. I think of this archaeological texture as “Jewish,” which must have something to do with the goods on offer at the bakeries in the Jewish neighborhood of Toronto, where I grew up. (For similar reasons, I also have a fondness for saw-dust-dry cakes.) Nate likes his cookies soft, chewy, sweet and chocolatey, the kind that go down best with a tall glass of milk. Neither of us likes a cakey cookie, by the way. Somewhat unexpectedly, we both like the hard, whole-grain Digestives I make (see Issue #77), Nate especially so when I glaze them with chocolate.

Looking to bake something, the other day I was scrolling through some recipes I had clipped from various websites and stopped at one from Food & Wine for Chocolate Brownie Cookies. The recipe had been contributed by my friend and colleague, Dana Cowin, former editor-in-chief of that magazine. Dana is not someone who describes things as “the most delicious I’ve ever had,” lightly. So, I was intrigued.

I scanned the recipe. I had all the ingredients. The technique was unusual, more like a brownie than a cookie, as the name would suggest. You melted the chocolate with the butter and folded that into the eggs and sugar that had been beaten to the ribbon stage. There was also a step in the recipe I don’t recall seeing in a cookie before. The batter was frozen before being shaped. I’ve refrigerated many a cookie dough. I may have even frozen a roll of cookies to slice thin. And I have most certainly frozen cookie dough already shaped so I could bake it right from the freezer. But freezing batter to scoop and bake was new to me. I assumed the high proportion of melted chocolate must be the reason an extra chill is required.

This was a half batch of these cookies made with whole-grain flours and sized like silver dollars.

I set to work. The cookies were simple and, indeed, delicious. Not too cakey, fudgy, with a crisp edge a bit of chew. Nate devoured them. Then I realized that because of the unique proportions and shaping technique, this was one cookie with which I might be able tinker. I made them again, only this time I subbed in whole-grain flour, actually a combination of whole wheat and dark rye in equal parts. Success! The cookies kept their unique texture and flavor. (Nate still hasn’t noticed.)

Note: I find rye flour usually a good whole-grain substitute for some of the all-purpose flour in almost any baking recipe because it has just a tiny bit of gluten, which lowers the protein content overall, thereby simulating the texture you get when using cake or pastry flour. Plus, rye’s flavor is almost always an enhancement.

With this tinkering success under my belt, I set about to try a few other variations. What about gluten-free flour? Or for Passover, matzo cake meal? Both came out great, perhaps with slightly less chew. With so little flour in proportion to the other ingredients, it’s really just there to add body and hold things together. Lastly, because it hardens when it chills, I tried substituting extra-virgin olive oil for butter, in case any of my kosher or kosher for Passover peeps might want their cookies to be pareve. And it worked great again (a little less olive oil than butter was best.)

Some other things I love about this recipe: The full batch makes about three dozen large cookies. But since I like to make small cookies so that we can pretend we are eating less, I made half a recipe and got 60 cookies. I have also quartered it. Finally, and this is fun, since you freeze the dough before baking, you can just keep it in the freezer for weeks, scoop off a few cookies, and bake them fresh when you want them.

This version is Pesadich.

RECIPE: Fudgy Double Chocolate Brownie Cookies

This recipe can be halved or even quartered to make only as much as you need. But why not make it all and keep the batter in the freezer so you can scoop and bake it when you want fresh-baked cookies? (Let them cool completely before eating!) For whole-grain cookies, sub out the all-purpose flour with equal parts whole wheat and rye. For gluten-free cookies, use your preferred gluten-free flour. For Passover cookies, use matzo cake meal. And to make them pareve, use 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil instead of the 4 tablespoons of butter called for in the original recipe.

(Makes 3 to 8 dozen cookies, depending on how big you make them)

• 1 pound semisweet chocolate (anything from 55% to 70% cacao works well), in discs, feves, or chopped

• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter or 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

• 4 large eggs, at room temperature

• 1 1/2 cups sugar

• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour, gluten-free flour, matzo cake meal, or ¼ cup whole wheat and ¼ cup rye flour

• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

• 12 ounces semisweet chocolate chips

Place the chocolate (not the chips) and butter or extra-virgin olive oil in a heat-proof bowl and set over a pan of simmering water. Stir until the chocolate is just about melted, then remove from the heat and continue stirring until no lumps remain.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with its whisk attachment, beat the eggs with the sugar at medium-high speed until thick and pale, about 5 minutes. When you lift the beater, a ribbon should stay visible for several seconds. (I do this by hand with a whisk for a little exercise.) Beat in the vanilla and salt.

Using a rubber spatula, fold the melted chocolate into the beaten egg mixtures and just when it is about to be fully incorporated, add the flour(s) and baking powder, and fold in completely. Stir in the chocolate chips. Transfer the batter to a small (ungreased) sheet pan or baking dish, cover with plastic wrap, and freeze until firm, at least an hour, but longer is fine.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats. Scoop heaping teaspoons or tablespoons of the batter, depending on how large you would like your cookies, into mounds of dough on the prepared baking sheets, leaving an inch or two around each cookie for spreading. Bake for about 10 minutes, or until the cookies have risen, are visibly dry on the edges and on most of the surface, and cracked. You don’t want to over bake them or they will lose their fudginess. My first batch usually takes 30 seconds longer. Remove the pan to a cooling rack and let sit for at least 10 minutes for the cookies to harden before you remove them to cool completely on the rack. The cookies will keep well in an airtight container at room temperature for about a week.