Chocolate Cookies

Chewy triple chocolate-chip, chocolate cookies.

Fresh out of the oven these chocolate cookies are chewy with squidgy soft centres. If they are around long enough to be allowed to fully cool, they crisp up nicely and are ideal for dunking in milk or coffee.

Also See: Is Coffee Halal?

Chocolate Cookies

After sharing a photo on Instagram (with a mouthful of a description) you may have thought these part whole-wheat cookies are kinda healthy? Turns out not so much. They still contain lots of sugar but at least they have some whole-wheat flour = more vitamins and minerals and fibre.

I adapted this recipe by:

A. Swapping out some white flour for whole-wheat.

B. Swapping out some flour for cocoa powder

C. Instead of semi-sweet chocolate chips, I used a mix of good quality milk, dark (70% cocoa solids) and white chocolate chips.

The original recipe uses a mix of brown and white granulated sugar, I had neither. I used all golden (unrefined) granulated sugar and added a tablespoon of black treacle / molasses to make faux brown sugar.

Have you ever searched online for volume to weight conversions? I used this calculator but now after looking at two other websites that gave me different values for 1 cup of everything! I figured next time If a recipe asks for cups, I will just use cups. This inaccuracy in converting volume to weight could explain why I got crisper but still chewy cookies. That and my major boo boo of calculating what 1 cup granulated sugar is in grams instead of brown, 1 cup brown sugar weighs less than 1 cup granulated. I chose granulated because that’s what I was using to make faux brown but now looking back I would have done things differently and saved a few calories. See notes in recipe below.

I baked some of the cookies from the fresh cookie dough, as the children were eager to try them ASAP. Another lot went in the oven after an hour in the fridge and the last went in to bake the following morning after approximately 22 hour chilling time.

A few tips / things I did:

1. I measured the dough with a regular tablespoon (not the measuring kind), a rounded regular tablespoon’s worth of dough per cookie made 28 cookies. You could use a tablespoon measuring scoop and you may get the full 3 dozen.
2. I put 5-6 cookies per baking sheet, any more than that and they may start touching. Of course this depends on the size of your baking sheet.
3. I baked my cookies for the full 12 minutes, rotating the baking sheet from back to front half-way through the bake time.

I left the majority of chocolate cookies to cool fully on the baking sheet before storing. The rest didn’t stand a chance, they were left to cool only a few minutes before being whipped off the sheet and eaten – chewy edges, soft, squidgy chocolate-puddled centres.

My favourites and the ones photographed were after the cookie dough had been chilled for an hour. For me they are the perfect middle of the road cookie, crisp but not rock-solid, very chewy and just plain old irresistible. The chocolate cookies that were baked after a longer chilling time, were thicker, very chewy and somewhat dry. I think this would be due to the whole wheat grain and coco powder sucking out the moisture.

On winter days like these, I like dunking my cookies in a big mug of warm milk or milky coffee. If I weren’t so inclined to dunk, I would sprinkle a little coarse salt over the cookies before baking or whilst they were fresh from the oven.

Are you a cookie/biscuit dunker?

Ingredients

• 150g white plain / all purpose flour
• 130g whole-wheat plain / all purpose flour
• 2 tablespoon natural cocoa powder
• heaped ½ teaspoon baking soda
• 170g unsalted butter
• 337g unrefined golden graulated sugar, divided
• 1 tablespoon black treacle (molasses)
• ½ teaspoon halal vanilla extract (or tsp vanilla essence)
• 1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
• 60g dark chocolate chips (70% cocoa solids)
• 60g milk chocolate chips
• 60g white chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Stir together the flours, cocoa and baking soda, set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, stir together with a fork 225 grams of granulated sugar and black treacle until the treacle is thoroughly incorporated and the sugar is one even brown colour.
3. Now in another med-large bowl cream butter, the remaining granulated sugar and your faux brown sugar until fluffy. Mix in your vanilla, followed by your egg and then your egg yolk.
4. Slowly mix in the flour mixture into the butter mixture, mixing well. Add most of the chocolate chips.
5. Scoop out the dough with a regular tablespoon,roll into balls and set no more than 6 on a lined baking sheet, press a few remaining chocolate chips into each cookie. and refrigerate for 1 hour.
6. Preheat oven to Gas Mark 5 / 375 F / 190C. Bake cookies on middle shelf for 10 to 12 minutes, rotating sheet from back to front half-way through. Allow to cool at least 5 minutes on baking sheet before transferring to cooling rack (or eating). Alternatively allow to cool completely on baking sheet as I did then store in an airtight container.

Notes

Summary

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Chocolate Cookies