Making A Mocha-ry

I found the almost-perfect cookie recipe online the other day.

At first I thought Pinterest was being slightly irreverent, for after showing me it's own interpretation of my wants and needs (gluten-free recipes, pimp-your-own-home-library ideas, and shoes that cost the equivalent of one month's rent) it displayed unto me a recipe for chocolate and coffee cookies. Chocolate and coffee. A perfect combination for the mostly-reformed chocaholic who can't live without her coffee. Little sparkly lights at the edge of my vision may have also been involved. Then came the zinger: fully-glutened chocolate and coffee cookies. Such cruelty.

But then, I reasoned with myself, I wasn't making a fancy cake where simply substituting wheat flour with GF flour would result in probable disaster, I was going to make cookies. For myself. No-one else need know if disaster ensued. So I decided to use my M&S All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour instead of the wheat flour used in the original recipe, and hang the consequences.

I'm nothing if not a self-enabler under the guise of Food Blogger To The Stars Few. 

Now, I have to admit to making some other changes in the recipe, too, mostly down to replacing the ingredients I didn't have with the ones I did have. With a little sprinkling of laziness, but hey, if I was meant to be a master baker I'm sure the Fates would have pointed me in the right direction well before now. And I'm pretty sure they like a laugh as much as the next person.

So my faithful few, if you've got this far then today we're attempting Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies from Just A Taste. In the (un)Official Nic Revolutionary Edit of 2015™. Someone so needs to hire me as their spin doctor. I'd be awesome. I'd make everything sound a little cheesy, but I'd be awesome.

For approximately twenty five cookies you need:

3 ounces or 85g of unsweetened chocolate, chopped

2 cups or 350g of semisweet chocolate chips, divided

8 tbs or 115g of unsalted butter, diced

3 large eggs

1 cup + 2 tbs or 250g of sugar

2 tsp instant coffee granules

¾ cup or 105g all-purpose flour (gluten free)

⅓ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

My replacements and substitutions ingredients-wise were thus: I used 100g of dark chocolate (a bars-worth over here in Clogland), mostly because I only had 180 grams of chocolate chips in the cupboard and needed any extra chocolate I could find. A terrible, horrible oversight that, running out of choc chips, and one of which I promise will never happen again. The shame. The humiliation. The... well, shock. Especially as I brought back a huge stash from home the last time I was there, what with them being on average around a quarter of the price of the equivalent over here, and I have no idea where they've gone. Well, no, that's a lie, they've gone to that Great Food Processor in the Sky. It's just obviously set on ‘Turbo Mix'. :: coughs ::

I used 170 grams of white sugar and added light brown sugar to bring it up to 250, purely because I forgot to write ‘white sugar' on my black-board shopping list last week when I realised I was running perilously low.

I also added another teaspoon of coffee granules to the amount advised in the recipe, mostly because I actually wanted to taste coffee in the cookies. I've found in the past that adding a little coffee to a chocolate recipe gives a boost to the overall chocolate taste without actually adding a coffee taste, which is great if you're wanting a Real Chocolate Experience, but because I'm looking for more of a nicely-mixed mocha, I added a little more coffee.

So really, if you want to make exactly what I made, you need:

3½ ounces or 100g 70% dark chocolate, chopped
1 cup or 175g semisweet chocolate chips
8tbs or 115g unsalted butter, diced
2 large eggs (yeah, I forgot to buy those, too)
17/20 cup or 170g white sugar (hey, it's about time the US measurements had to work for a change...)
2/5 cup or 80g light brown sugar (ditto)
3 tsp instant coffee granules

¾ cup or 105g all-purpose flour (gluten free)

⅓ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt

You're advised to pre-heat your oven to 350F or 175C, but I decided to wait. Not because I was worried that my poor old oven would be blasting away on stand-by for hours (as suggested by so many other recipes) but because the notes at the end of the recipe tell us that the batter will be much looser than the average cookie dough, no doubt because of the melted chocolate and butter, and I reckoned twenty minutes or so in the fridge before spooning them out to bake would lessen the chance of spread a bit. So I decided I'd put the oven on after placing the batter in the chilly depths of the refrigerator. 

You need to combine the chopped chocolate, the butter, and 1 cup of chocolate chips in a double boiler, and stir until they've melted. Or, if you're me, you'll combine the butter and chocolate (keeping the choc chips for a textural addition to the finished batter because you don't have enough to both melt and add for texture at the end) in a microwave bowl, and blitz it on high for thirty seconds at a time until it has melted.

Who would have thought such a sublime subject would be so difficult to capture by camera phone? Brown does not appear to be the most photogenic of colours when it comes to food.

Next it is suggested that you add a whisk attachment to your stand mixer and whisk the eggs, sugar and instant coffee granules on high speed until very thick, and the mixture forms a ribbon when the whisk is lifted, for about three minutes. Or ten minutes with a hand whisk and a lot of determination.

Then the fun part, although what's not fun about giving yourself neck-ache trying to simulate an electric whisk, (I feel like I'm turning into the Karl Pilkington of the fake food blogging world, and I'm not sure if that amuses or concerns me...) the fun part is slowly adding the melted chocolate to the egg and sugar mix, and whisking just until combined. The smell! THE SMELL, people. Oof. Now I'm really kicking myself for making these on a fast day. 

(It's not the first time I've conveniently misplaced the knowledge that I'm supposed to be on a food vacation day. My earliest attempt at making peanut butter banana bread fell on a fast day. No, actually, I'm well aware that it's a fast day, yet, incredibly, my brain likes to convince me that it's actually a clever idea to bake something that smells ridiculously tasty when I'm not actually allowed to eat it that day. I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Brains are awesome but awful.

I'm talking about the 5:2 diet/lifestyle thing where I eat five hundred calories for two non-consecutive days per week. I've written about it already. I may write about it again at some point. It's not starvation, but it's five hundred calories to be consumed however you choose over one day, twice weekly. I usually choose some variety of home-made vegetable soup for lunch, and a massive pile of roast veggies for dinner. I don't feel full ever on these fast days (a potential oxymoron if I ever saw one), and although I'm not fit for company by the evening, I'm a great fan of the diet. The lifestyle. The whatever it is.)

So, after lamenting over the suspicion that your brain secretly hates you, you then need to turn off your stand mixer, or try to massage some life back into your dead arm, sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl and stir until just combined, then add the remaining (or only) cup of chocolate chips.

It's at this point I put the bowl of batter in the fridge to harden a little (and put the oven on to pre-heat), because, as promised in the notes, the batter was a lot looser than your average cookie dough, and I figured putting them in the (pre-heated) oven as they were would only result in one massive tray-shaped cookie*, instead of more portion-friendly cookie batches. Although to be honest, it would have looked prettier than the... well, the effort below. 

After ten to twelve minutes in the oven (or until the cookies are cracked on top, and a little puffy-looking) you can take them out, and let them cool a little on the tray before transferring them to a rack. I was happy to see my effort exceeded all expectations in the looks department.

I then took artè-fartè photos of said not-so-ugly cookies; some not-quite-in-focus close-ups of broken cookies, then put them all BROKEN COOKIES INCLUDED in a box in the fridge. My will-power received a hearty slap on the back.

Cookies for breakfast tomorrow, though...

The Day After Edit: Oh my stars. These are good. REALLY good. Just squidgey enough in the middle whilst retaining their slightly crisp cookie edge, and a heavenly mix of coffee and chocolate. If you change nothing else in the original recipe, I (racing) heartily suggest adding an extra teaspoon of instant coffee granules. Because. Om. mmtastymm

* In the spirit of honesty, I must admit that this option did indeed cross my mind.