Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies for Tuesdays with Dorie

Mocha Chip Cookies

A friend and I recently discussed whether she needed a big standing mixer. It’s eye candy for sure, and manages to launch all manner of baking daydreams.

For a long time, I had only a hand mixer, which I hesitated to use because it was stuck in a box in the corner on a very high shelf in the kitchen. A lot of work to take down and put away. So I mixed a lot of cakes by hand, which I rather enjoyed, because I could get in touch with the pioneer within and I could feel smart that I wasn’t using any electricity.

You can make cookies by hand, too, but sometimes a stiff cookie dough can benefit from a little horsepower. Especially the kind that operates on your kitchen counter while you stand back and watch. Take these Mocha Chocolate Chip cookies, for instance. The all-butter dough stayed thick in my chilly kitchen and would have been a beast to mix by hand. I was glad to let the mixer do the heavy lifting.

These cookies feature a coffee-flavored dough absolutely laden with bittersweet chocolate chips. Laden as in a full one pound of chocolate for 2 cups of flour. (Not complaining.) The coffee is not prominent for those who think they don’t like coffee. Rather, it serves as a layer to enhance the chocolate.

The recipe calls for dried apricots, which are optional and which I forgot anyway. I had an issue with the first batch because they turned out too thin for my liking. This is because the large organic eggs I used should have been marked as jumbo. I added about 1/3 cup more flour to the remaining dough and the rest turned out just right.

If you would like to try these cookies, the recipe is being hosted at Galettista. Stroll over to the Tuesdays with Dorie website where you’ll find links to all the participating bloggers.

Boca Negra for Tuesdays with Dorie

Lora Brody’s Boca Negra

I met Lora Brody, the author of today’s recipe, some 20 years ago in Columbus, OH. She was a visiting guest at La Belle Pomme Cooking School, a delightful place that was run by the food writer, author and recipe developer Betty Rosbottom (whose newspaper columns and  Bon Appetit features I have long enjoyed).

A chocolate-loving friend had shared her copy of Lora Brody’s book Growing Up on the Chocolate Diet: A Memoir with Recipes. Hers was the first food memoir I’d ever read and it was quite a revelation. And it was inspiring because I had begun writing about food for a local magazine. I loved and still enjoy Brody’s witty and honest reflections on family traditions, dinner party anxieties and chocolate.

At the book-signing, Brody asked what all I’d cooked and I told her how much I had enjoyed the Trianon, a hard-won recipe that she landed after many years of searching,  experimentation and networking. She responded approvingly and said, “Have you had the Black Beast? Make that.” She nodded as if dispensing secret code.

I did prepare the Bête Noire and it became a signature dessert, particularly among a certain group of friends. It was a flourless chocolate cake before flourless cake fame. This is Chocolate As Drug because — if you pay attention — you might feel a happy jolt to the brain after  the first bite. I frequently made this in the mornings before work — often before breakfast, even — so you can imagine the chocolate and caffeine rush from a few licks of the spoon.

The reason I’m telling you all this is that that the Black Beast is akin to the Boca Negra. The Boca Negra adds a smidgen of flour and substitutes bourbon for some of the water. Both recipes call for a fair amount of chocolate, which is probably why I get nervous when my chocolate supply dips below one couple pounds. This recipe was a pleasure to bake because it was like visiting an old friend.

Just to be different, I baked the Boca Negra in small ramekins rather than one large pan. The white chocolate ganache I prepared a little more thinly using half-and-half and drizzled it over the top of the cake.

If you’d like to see the recipe for  Boca Negra from the book Baking with Julia, hop over to today’s host, A Frederick Food Garden. To see what other Tuesday with Dorie bloggers have to say, visit here.

TWD: Chocolate Truffle Tartlets

Chocolate Truffle Tartlets

Do not dismiss this as just another chocolate tart. It most definitely is not ordinary.

Today’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is from David Ogonowski. At first glance, I surmised that the truffle part of the name meant a ganache filling. Tasty enough, but common. I figured the little jibbles of amaretti and the chopped white and milk chocolates must be thrown in for amusing texture. But when I re-read the recipe, I saw there was no heavy cream, and therefore, no ganache.

What I hadn’t figured on were the egg yolks.

Eight of them, in fact, for a recipe that yields six tartlets. (That’s one and one-third egg yolk per tart, but I’m not counting.)

The egg yolks are beaten until very moussey. Into those airy yolks are folded melted butter and bittersweet chocolate. Actually what it reminded me of was the pre-freezer Chocolate Ice Cream St. John (aka Five Day Ice Cream) with its rich quantity of eggs, chocolate and cream.

To the filling is added bits of amaretti or biscotti. (I made my own amaretti by using the leftover egg white from the chocolate dough.) Next go the chopped pieces of white and milk chocolates. Fill the chocolate tart shells and pop into the oven to set the yolks.

Each tart is like a chocolate cookie wrapped around a delicate brownie — and I say brownie even though there is not one smidgen of flour in the filling. Wonderful texture. Enjoy one when it is slightly warm because the bits of chopped chocolate are soft and melty. A touch of coffee ice cream or crème anglaise wouldn’t hurt.

These extraordinary tartlets are from the book Baking with Julia. You’ll find the recipes at the blogs of our hosts Jaime of Good Eats and Sweet Treats, and Jessica of Cookbookhabit.

From Paris Sweets: Sablés Korova

If chocolate is your drug of choice, try a Korova Cookie.

As I mixed the dough for these intensely chocolate Korova cookies, I could not help but think about other uses for the recipe. Pie dough, for one, the most obvious choice. The proportion of ingredients is essentially that for pâte sablée, the cookie-like crust used in many French pastries.

Yes, this recipe would make a fine tart crust to hold a multitude of sweet fillings. It is just as (or more) intensely chocolate as crusts made from chocolate sandwich cookies, but not quite as sweet.

As a cookie, it is awfully good. Slightly sandy as a shortbread like sablé should be — but with contrasting bits of bittersweet chocolate and the occasional hit of salt crystals from the fleur de sel. I’m not a raw cookie dough fan (cake batter is my weakness), but I really liked the pure chocolate flavor of this dough.

October Baketogether: Spiced Coffee Cake + Cocoa Streusel + Chocolate

Spiced Coffee Cake + Cocoa Streusel + Chocolate

Streusel has been a stumbling block.

There’s the messy factor of all those crumbs showering about, landing on your chin or clothing. (But don’t mistake me for a neat freak.)

And while I love cinnamon, sugar, flour and butter, I don’t enjoy them so much on top of a cake. (Or an apple pie, come to think of it.)

So, yes, the streusel appeal (like Broadway musicals) has been lost on me, which I realize sounds a bit un-American.

I was rehashing all this to my husband and before I could finish he said, “I like coffee cake. I like streusel.” He also enjoys musicals.

Abby Dodge’s Classic Sour Cream Coffee Cake for the October Baketogether challenge was too appealing to ignore — a richly spiced cake moist with tangy sour cream. I most definitely like cake. As for the streusel ribbon and topping, I thought I could work with it.

Here’s what I did:
• I substituted about 2 T. cocoa powder for cinnamon in the streusel. (Is it no longer streusel without cinnamon?) Warm spices take so nicely to chocolate — chocolate chips, glazes and frostings with spice cake, pumpkin bread, pumpkin cookies. Love it.

• I added chopped dark chocolate to melt into the streusel mixture.

• For the cake batter, I used 2 t. of mixed pumpkin pie spices instead of the cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves called for in the recipe. This move was purely one of convenience on my part, but I liked the result.

• I used less streusel on top of the cake, not wanting to overdo it. Next time, I will use it all, but probably swirl through the batter a bit more.

Stumbling block removed to streusel success. Thanks, Abby, for organizing #Baketogether and offering a new recipe for my files.

Spiced Coffee Cake with Cocoa Streusel and Chocolate

adapted from Abby Dodge

Chocolate Streusel
2/3 cup (4 5/8 ounces) firmly packed dark brown sugar
3/4 cup ( 3 3/8ounces) all purpose flour
2 good tablespoons cocoa
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Cake
2 cups (9 ounces) all purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spices
1/2 teaspoon table salt
8 tablespoons (4 ounces) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cups (8 3/4 ounces) firmly packed light brown sugar
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
2 large eggs, at room temperature
1 cup sour  cream, at room temperature
3 to 4 oz. dark chocolate, chopped into small pieces

To make the streusel:
In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, flour and cocoa. Drizzle over the melted butter. Using a fork (or use your fingers), mix the ingredients until they are well blended and form small crumbs. Place in the refrigerator while cake is prepared.

To make the cake:
Position an oven rack in the center of the oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease and flour the sides and bottom of a 9 x 2-inch square baking pan.

Combine the flour, baking soda, salt and spices in a medium bowo. Whisk until well blended. Cream butter, sugar and vanilla in a large bowl with an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat at medium speed until well blended, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Scrape the bowl and beaters as needed. Add about half of the flour mixture and mix on low speed just until blended. Add the sour cream and mix just until blended. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the remaining flour mixture.

Scrape half of the batter into the prepared pan and spread evenly. Evenly scatter half of the streusel mixture over the batter. Sprinkle half of the chocolate pieces over the streusel. Spoon the remaining batter evenly over the streusel and spread evenly. Scatter the remaining streusel and chocolate pieces evenly over the top.

Bake until the top is browned and a pick inserted in the center of the cake comes out clean, 43  to 45 minutes. Cool the pan on a wire rack until warm or room temperature.

#Irene Chocolate Mousse Cookies with Peanut Butter for #BakeTogether

#Irene Chocolate Mousse Cookies with Peanut Butter Filling

This has not been a year for rain in due season.

Indeed, there’s been too much rain in places, not enough in others.

Abby Dodge, #BakeTogether’s organizer, was among thousands of folks inundated by rain and wind from Hurricane Irene. The storm worked its way up the eastern coast and dumped on New England.

While holed up, she announced these Double Chocolate Mousse Cookies for September’s #BakeTogether event.

As New England and other parts of the country battled water damage and mildew, other parts have hoped for rain. The South and Southwest have suffered under prolonged drought caused by the La Nina weather system.

Many crops have failed, among them peanuts. A shortage is imminent and peanut butter prices will rise. Part of the peanut shortage is due to crop failure from bad weather. The other reason is economics. Some farmers didn’t plant peanuts this year, opting instead to grow cotton whose prices were attractively high.

Rose Bakery’s Chocolate and Banana Cake

Chocolate and Banana Cake

I recently came home with a haul of bananas. An estimated 15 to 20 just-ripe fruit were in the paper sack, and they were mine for 99 cents because the supermarket was letting them go for reasons I’m not quite sure. I stood there, weighing whether to take them or not, and the thought of desserts and smoothies tipped the balance.

The first thing I made was this chocolate and banana cake from the cookbook Breakfast, Lunch, Tea: The Many Little Meals of Rose Bakery. The book features recipes for soups, vegetable tarts, pizettes, little salads and sweets — a selection of dishes offered at the Paris bakery.

Briton Rose Carrarini launched the bakery with her French husband in 2002. Before coming to Paris, Rose and Jean-Charles ran Villandry in London. Villandry came about after the couple realized their passions ran toward food instead of the knitwear business they’d been engaged in for many years.

Five Days to Chocolate Ice Cream St. John

Chocolate Ice Cream St. John (or Five Day Ice Cream)

Do you remember how Darren would call Samantha at the last minute to say he’s bringing Larry Tate over for dinner? And there the pretty Samatha would be, not worrying about dinner itself, but rather how to get one or more odd relatives to (literally) disappear.

Dinner would be ready when Darren walked through the door, alone or with guests.

Today’s world finds us scheduling social occasions as far in advance as dental visits. It’s only now that I am away from an office job that I have the luxury to plan for dinner guests.

One thing to be said for planning is that you can spend a lot of time kvetching about what to eat. Early notice also allows you to serve, for instance, a chocolate ice cream that takes five days to prepare.

Big Flavor Brownies

Big Flavor Brownies adapted from Barron’s Brownies

When David Lebovitz wrote of these brownies he used the words “insane” and “massive.”

Go big or go home. I took notice.

And he reported the brownies baked from this heavy batter sliced easier and tasted better after some time in the freezer. My brownie slices always look untidy.

David adapted Maida Heatter’s Barron’s Brownies, a recipe she adapted from a Palm Beach newspaper article some years back. I made them last month, adding the walnuts as he did, but drew the line at a filling of peppermint cream because I don’t much care for chocolate mint anything.