To be honest, they only stay powdered-sugar snow-crinkled for about half an hour. I'm not sure why, but even in December the moisture level here has the ability to make those beautiful pebbles of chocolate drown into...well, baked blobs of chocolate - equally yummy of course. Oh! and the horror of desperately trying all different methods with many subsequent failed attempts to completely dry out trays of potentially perfect little meringue kisses... I was letting them get a little R&R so I left the house for a hop and a skip, and when I got home, they were sweating up a storm, more on that in a later entry.
I tried Chocolate Crinkles last year for the first time, probably around holiday season after seeing them on a number of blogs. I started out by using regular baking chocolate, SO regular I feel bad revealing the brand (no offense at all to regular chocolate dearies, I think I even bought an extra pack "just in case" I messed up. I didn't mess up and the pack of chocolate was there so... you know the story).
The first batch came out waaaay too buttery, they almost had a fried consistency - still consumed by the devoted test subjects nonetheless (if I recall correctly, they were quite drunk). The second time I made it, I held back a bit of the butter and broke out with the Godiva dark which I chopped into little pieces before melting. I'm not a professional cook by any means, so I'm not too sure if it is a sin in the world of baking to use random chocolate for cooking, but they came out beautifully. The cinnamon in the cookies is such an unexpected, wonderful, and warm kick - not that these need too much convincing when the baking aroma begins to take hostage of your house!
8 ounces chocolate pieces (dark or semisweet, I think both are okay...or a mixture?! be adventurous, if you mess up, you will be punished with having to eat allllll that chocolate boohoo)
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup regular white granulated sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 cups flour (I used whole wheat all purpose flour)
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
Edible SNOW! powdered sugar of course...
- Chop up the chocolate pieces, it'll make the melting process faster and easier. You can do the same for the butter if you want!
- Put the chocolate and the butter in a double boiler to melt them together. I know I know, it already sounds like bad news. It'll only get worse I tell ya!
- Beat the eggs together with the 1/2 cup sugar until it's all fluffy. It won't get stiff like egg whites of course.
- Beat in the vanilla.
- Spoon in the chocolate mixture and stir together.
- Leave chocolate on the spoon so you can lick it (not optional)
- In another bowl, sift together the flour, salt, cinnamon, and baking powder. Mix so it's all even.
- Add the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture.
- Refrigerate for 3-4 hours or more so it gets firm enough to form into balls. Here is when I went really really wrong. Sugarcrafter suggested microwaving the bowl if you leave it in over night so it's easier to work with. WELL, I refrigerated the mixture in a metal bowl, which is not okay to microwave...I had to warm it up with my hands which took much too long. If you're smart enough, which I know you are, you'll refrigerate in a glass or plastic bowl and you can microwave for about 15 seconds, you don't want to get it TOO soft!!
Preheat to 162C/325F- Fill a bowl with the powdered sugar and begin rolling balls of dough around a tablespoon size. This is a bit too decadent for the 1/4 cup per cookie measurement.
- Roll the lil guys in the powdered sugar until they're all covered.
- Place on lined baking sheet making sure that their is about 1 1/2 inches between them since they'll spread a bit.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes. Please don't bake them for too long because they're super good when they're a bit fudgy!!
Ginger cookies or Shortbread cookies this week?
No comments:
Post a Comment
feed me pleease