Death by Chocolate


When putting Carly to bed last night, I asked her if she liked the cookies we made earlier in the afternoon, and what makes the perfect cookie.  She said "they were the perfect kind because they were smooth inside but like with a little crunch on the outside."  This is no kidding, verbatim.  I said, "yes, that is a trick to do them that way."  I hope she went off to cookie and milk dreams from there, but she was right – the trick is to try to find that perfect cookie which is both creamy on the inside but also holds a crunch on the outside.

I have found that a lot of the usual advice from professional bakers is essentially true: to get cookies right, you have to have close to exact measurements, especially on key ingredients, like the flour.  An under-floured cookie has very little chance of eventually holding its hoped for form, and will flatten then over crisp when baking.  The cookie loses its body.  Heat is also critical.  I like to let the oven pre heat for much longer than the oven preheat beep.  I once gauged the preheat temp and it had not climbed to the goal heat number as the oven had indicated.  If the cookie isn't getting its proper 350, then again it won't form the way you want.  The most important step, though, we have found, is to experiment with size of the dough ball or with substituted ingredients.  The cookies above called for a choice of chopped nuts in addition to the two boxes of semi sweet Baker's chocolate, brown sugar, two eggs, and Calumet.  I diced up a minimal handful of nuts and tossed them in because none of the kids seem to want them, but I wanted to add just a bit more texture than what I already had.  It seems that even the batter, before the oven cooking, turned out edible:

Now, in the process of making that perfect death by chocolate cookie, thankfully nobody died, but mouths did come in contact with some very dangerous products, as seen in the next pic.  We rushed to the sink for a scrub and soap, and fortunately everybody ended up OK: