Sunday, January 22, 2006

Bake these cookies

There was this one week in December, in which it seemed that everyone was baking Korova cookies!



I think Bear and I must've made more than 6 batches of these, including some in our christmas cookie baking extravaganza. Basically, these are the yummiest chocolate chunk cookie I've ever eaten, much less baked myself. And they're so easy! The essential thing of course is that you must use quality ingredients. We used valhrona cocoa powder, which is super powderful cocoa, and also valhrona block chocolate for the chocolate chunks. In fact, my favourite thing about this recipe is the potential for using different kinds of chocolate to change the flavour. For example, we've used the orange flavoured valhrona to make really really yummy dark chocolate and orange cookies, and then we did some with white chocolate chunks and macadamias (see picture). I think hazelnuts and milk chocolate might go well together... and there's this pink peppercorn bar from Dolfin that might be.. interesting, not to mention the beautiful earl grey bar they offer too....Or even almond and dark chocolate and nougat! Mmm!

After all this extensive chocolate eating, I have come to the conclusion that a 60-ish percent dark chocolate is my favourite sort and that the best expensive chocolate to purchase, value for money, is seldom the sort that comes in fancy boxes wrapped with ribbon and filled with all kinds of strange liquers...although those can be very very nice, they're just not as much value as the sort which comes in a bar, has a reputable name on it, specifies the cocoa content and sometimes says it comes from a particular region alone. That is, specialty (there is a name for this but i forget) chocolate. Sounds fussy and posh, but is a really sound idea yummywise!

Anyway, the best thing about making these cookies is that the dough, once made, can be kept frozen in one's refrigerator in happy anticipation of future cookie cravings! Just slice, and bake!

If anyone would like to make these cookies, the recipe can be found here, although I would advise chopping the chocolate into chunks rather than small bits, and baking them a minute or two longer, say about 13 minutes if room temperature, and 15 minutes if straight from the freezer, especially if you don't have a fan forced oven. I like my cookies with a bit more crunch than brownies, but obviously you should do as you like. :)

Must thank Su-Lin for first describing and recommending said cookies. Su-Lin is a yummy friend!

I'm going to eat cookies now.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Cindy Q says: I'm not huge on cookies esp with nuts but those are very pretty cookes!

You're a yummy friend too syn, two words - krispy kreme. :D

syn said...

haha, don't worry.. next time we go back, we'll definitely ask you how many boxes you want! :P

Anonymous said...

I am trying to source Valhrona coca (I live in South Australia) and was wondering where you bought yours from? Even though you live interstate, I may be able to order it. Ta :-)

syn said...

Hiya Jess, we get our valhrona cocoa from Simon Johnson, and they have an online store: http://www.simonjohnson.com.au

Hope you find it!