Flood relief comfort cookies - soft and melty choc chip

Soft and Melty Choc Chunk Cookies
Home Cooking



I had an RDO 2 days after the Toowoomba flash floods. 80% of it was spent in bed watching TV and on Facebook. I did manage to do the laundry and wash some dishes, which felt productive. I also whipped up some cookies.



Cookie baking is great because the process is comforting/distracting/relaxing and the result is equally (or even more) comforting.


Once I decided to bake cookies, I did the typical Gen Y thing of Googling 'best crunchy choc chip cookie recipe ever' and clicked the first link that came up.

This recipe came up and it's the one I used. I followed it quite precisely except when it came to the chocolate chips themselves. I used a block of chocolate, ~ 250g and broke the whole thing up into little squares. They looked too chunky to me so I pulsed the lot through a food processor and got a mixture of large chunks, small pieces and grated chocolate flakes. I used mostly dark chocolate but had a bit of white left over that I threw into the mix.

The other thing I just noticed is that I unintentionally forgot the brown sugar. The cookies turned out fine and were already very sweet so I'll leave them out of my recipe.

Soft and Melty Choc Chunk Cookies
Makes ~ 24

Ingredients:

• 1 and 1/2 cups plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 110g cold unsalted butter, cut into 1cm cubes
• 1 and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 large egg
• 250g chocolate broken into little squares

Procedure:

1. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt into a medium bowl and set aside.
2. Using a standing mixer or a hand mixer, cream the butter and sugars on low speed until it is smooth and lump free (about 3 minutes). Stop the mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl and the paddle.
3. Add the vanilla and egg and beat on low speed for 15 seconds, or until fully incorporated. Do not overbeat. Stop the machine and scrape down the sides of the bowl and the paddle.
4. On low speed, add the flour mixture. Beat until just incorporated. Scrape down the sides of the bowl.5. Add the chocolate chunks and stir in with a wooden spoon.6. Roll the dough out into a long log on some cling wrap and wrap into a sausage. Refrigerate dough for at least an hour, and preferably 24-36 hours.7. Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Adjust racks to lower and upper thirds of the oven. Line two baking trays with baking paper.
8. I sliced the dough log into 1cm thick slices and pressed each circle down onto the tray about 2-3cm apart.
9. Bake for 11-13 minutes or until golden brown around the edges but still soft, almost underdone-looking, in the center. Turn the sheets front to back and switch racks halfway through.10. Cool the cookies completely before eating or they will be too soft to even pick up.


I actually think this assortment of chocolate sizes really improved the overall success of the cookies. I followed the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe before and it incorporated grated chocolate so that's what semi-inspired the idea.

Accident

The cookies were more soft and giving than crunchy. I suppose that's because I didn't leave them in the oven for long enough. I had a bit of an accident... when I tried to switch the racks around for even cooking, I lost my grip and one rack of cookies fell splat onto the ground. They weren't near cooked enough and as a result I found myself cleaning up a huge warm chocolate and dough puddle (which, if you haven't had the luck to experience, is pleasant and disgusting at the same time). I lost heart and took the other rack not long after.

Bite shot

I did get feedback from my girlfriends that they like soft cookies but that could just be niceities. In any case, the crunchiness of a cookie can be adjusted according to how long you leave them in the oven for.

These are perfect with milk.