This might be my new go-to cookie recipe. Dan gets a bit cross whenever I suggest anything other than the Original Toll House cookie recipe and I have to agree to an extent – when making simple chocolate chip cookies, that recipe is a classic for a good reason. These cookies are a whole different beast.
Whole wheat flour, molasses-y dark brown sugar, sea salt, and great quality bittersweet chunks of chocolate. They have an extremely deep flavour with a rich nuttiness from the whole wheat flour and dark brown sugar. You can detect a hint of saltiness in every bite which sets off the dark chocolate so amazingly well. If you haven’t experienced a hint of sea salt in your cookies yet, you’re about to have your mind blown. These are absolute keepers.
This book
only offers quantities in cups so for my metric system users I weighed all the ingredients out on my scale for you and have included the exact weights below. You are most welcome :)
As a side note, I’d like to make a little argument for weighing ingredients using a scale. I feel comfortable using both systems, but I prefer to weigh for baking because there’s much less risk of human error (also the weight of flour, for example, can vary considerably depending on the quality of the flour, how much you pack into the cup, and the humidity of the air). I bought mine for about $20 (here’s a similar one) and it’s revolutionized my baking.
Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from Good to the Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours
Ingredients
- 454g/ 16oz/ 3 cups whole wheat flour
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 ½ tsp kosher salt
- 226g/ 80z/ 2 sticks cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
- 145g/ 5oz/ 1 cup dark brown sugar
- 226g/ 8oz/ 1 cup white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 226g/ 8oz bittersweet chocolate, roughly chopped into ¼- and ½- inch chunks
Directions
- Place an oven rack in the centre of the oven. Preheat oven to 180C/ 350F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
- Sift whole wheat flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt into a medium sized bowl. Pour any grainy bits that remain in the sifter into your bowl as well.
- In a large bowl, add the butter, dark brown sugar, and white sugar, and beat until butter and sugars are just blended. If you don’t have a stand mixer get ready for an epic arm workout.
- Mix in the eggs, one at a time, making sure the first is combined before adding the second. Mix in the vanilla.
- Gradually add the flour mixture to the large bowl and use a rubber spatula to combine. You’ll notice that the mixture is fairly dry and thick for cookie dough. Don’t panic – all is going according to plan! Add the chocolate chunks to the batter and mix until combined evenly.
- Scrape the batter out onto the work surface and use your hands to finish incorporating the all the ingredients.
- Scoops mounds of batter (about 3 tbsp each) onto your baking sheet, leaving a good 3 inches in between them (about 6 to a sheet). Bake for 16-20 minutes, until evenly dark brown. Transfer the cookies still on the parchment to a rack to cool. Continue with the rest of the batter. Eat cookies warm from the oven or later that same day. Makes about 20 cookies, the size of your palm.
Citrus season just isn’t letting up and I’m so very grateful. I was in D.C. for a couple of days last week – an absolute whirlwind visit – and had the fortune to eat at Central on Penn. Avenue, a James Beard award winning restaurant that delighted me with the best chicken burger I’ve ever had. Lemon chicken (somehow the citrus was worked into the perfectly cooked thigh meat) and a crisp, flat disc of fried cheese sitting atop. It was glorious.
A weird segue to cake, I realise, but it’s just another example of how citrus-obsessed I am. I fear it’s becoming a problem.
As soon as I saw this cake on one of my favourite blogs, Lottie + Doof, I knew I had to make it. As Tim says, it’s not a show-stopper of a cake; instead it’s what you might call an “everyday” cake.
Perhaps not dessert material but the perfect thing for a sweet breakfast with a strong cup of coffee or cosied up with a cup of tea and a book.
I’ll give you fair warning now – the mixture will feel wet and heavy with all that juice and olive oil in there. But the final product will be a bright, bold citrus flavour, a subtle nuttiness and an incredibly moist cake.
Orange-Walnut Cake
adapted from Bon Appetit Desserts via Lottie + Doof
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon baking powder
- 4 large eggs
- 1 1/3 cups sugar
- 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice (I used Pomelo oranges)
- 1 1/2 tablespoons finely grated orange zest
- 1/2 cup olive oil
- confectioner’s sugar, to dust (optional)
Directions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 9-inch-diameter spring-form pan with olive oil (I use a pastry brush). Place parchment paper round in bottom of pan and grease paper.
- Grind walnuts in a food processor until finely ground but not powdery. Combine the ground walnuts, flour, and baking powder in a medium bowl; set aside.
- Beat the eggs in large bowl until frothy, about 2 minutes. (Your arm is going to hate you, stay with it.) Gradually add the sugar, beating until light, thick, and pale yellow, about 4 minutes. (Again, arm hatred.) Gradually add the walnut-flour mixture; then add the orange juice, orange zest, and olive oil, beating just until blended. Transfer the batter to the prepared pan. Place pan on rimmed baking sheet and bake cake until tester inserted into center comes out clean, 50-60 minutes. Cool cake completely in pan on rack.
- Release pan sides. Carefully move cake onto platter. Sprinkle cake with confectioners sugar and serve.
On Saturday Dan and I ran a 5k race around Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. It was a breezy 1F (-20C) when we set off and most of the experience was spent trying to ignore the burning in my lungs and the numbing of my chin. Actually, it was really fun, as slightly extreme experiences like that tend to be, and we had a great time. But still – it was chuffing cold.
So I came home from the race and had a very long, very hot shower and a gorgeous fresh bagel and then set about making these cookies. Nothing soothes like a huge batch of chocolate-y, spiced cookies on a frigid day. Or any of the many days to follow…
The inspiration for these cookies came from David Lebovitz’s recipe for Mexican hot chocolate. I’ve started putting cinnamon in my hot chocolate and love it. Furthermore I’ve had a recipe for chipotle flour-less chocolate cake bookmarked for an ungodly amount of time. All of these ideas morphed in my mind until I decided that these cookies should come into existence.
I based the cookie recipe here on my chocolate cookies with sea salt (a perennial fave in the E4E household and one of the most popular posts on this blog) but added cinnamon and chile powder. I also omitted the sprinkling of sea and used half dark chocolate and half milk chocolate. I might use cayenne pepper next time in addition to or instead of chile powder. You can certainly taste the spice but it’s not overwhelming and the cinnamon is definitely the dominant flavour after chocolate, so adjust as you see fit.
Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon chile powder
- 4 oz dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa), 2 ounces coarsely chopped and 2 ounces cut into 1/4-inch chunks
- 4 oz milk chocolate, 2 ounces coarsely chopped and 2 ounces cut into 1/4-inch chunks
- 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Directions
- Preheat oven to 325F. Combine 2 ounces coarsely chopped dark chocolate with 2 ounces coarsely chopped milk chocolate with the butter and melt the two together in a pan. Remove from the heat and let cool slightly while you move onto step two.
- Sieve into a bowl and then whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, and chile powder; set aside.
- Put chocolate mixture, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in a bowl and mix until combined. Gradually add in the flour mixture. Fold in the remaining dark and milk chocolate chunks.
- Using a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto parchment-lined (or Silpat-lined) baking sheets, spacing them 2 inches apart. Bake until cookies are flat and surfaces crack, about 15 minutes (cookies should be soft). Let them cool on parchment on wire racks. Cookies can be stored between layers of parchment in airtight containers at room temperature up to 3 days. Or, just invite some friends over and watch them disappear. Makes about 2 dozen large cookies.
