Cocoa Chocolate Chip Cookies, Not Mocha—Tuesday With Dorie, Baking With Julia

For Tuesdays With Dorie this week, we got to make cookies!  Now THAT’S right up my alley.  Sadly, I had to skip the last pick, which was homemade croissants.  I just cannot subject myself sometimes to that much fat because I already know I love croissants.  If you want to see others who posted their croissants, look here.

Today’s cookies were supposed to be Mocha Chocolate Chip Cookies, but as most already know, we don’t “do” coffee products here, so I adapted it and instead of instant coffee powder, I used cocoa powder.  The cookies were also supposed to have chopped dried apricots in them. ???  I thought that sounded a little strange, but would have actually tried some in a few cookies if I’d have had some, but I didn’t.  Instead of trying dried cherries or something else, I just used lots of chocolate.  The recipes actually called for lots of chocolate—one pounds of any mix of bittersweet, milk, or white chocolate.  I used dark chocolate, semi-sweet and some milk chocolate.

I ended up only making half the recipe and at the last minute decided to make a few changes that I thought would help with high altitude.  I wanted to make sure the cookies didn’t spread and flatten out too much, which can be a high altitude issue and one that I don’t like.  I like a thicker, soft and chewy cookie.  And with the way I made them, that is exactly what I got.   Because I changed the recipe, here is how I made them, but if you want the recipe that has coffee and apricots from Baking With Julia, which was contributed by Rick Katz, you can get it from our host, Peggy from Galettista.

Cocoa Chocolate Chip Cookies, by Katrina, Baking and Boys!

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

5 tablespoons dark brown sugar

5 tablespoons granulated sugar

1 large egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1  1/4 (150 grams) cup unbleached all purpose flour

1 tablespoon cocoa powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 ounces chocolate chips (I used 5 ounces dark, 2 ounces semi-sweet and 1 ounce milk chocolate chips)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Line baking sheets with parchment paper.  In bowl of electric mixer, combine the butter, and sugars and beat until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes.  Add egg and vanilla and beat until combined.  In a medium sized bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt.  Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and mix just until all combined.  Stir in chocolate chips. 

Scoop cookies onto baking sheets leaving about 2 inches between each.  Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.  Let cookies sit on baking sheet for a couple minutes when they have come out of the oven then move them to a wire rack to cool completely.

*The Rick Katz recipe also has you chill the dough for a couple hours.  I baked a few cookies right away, then chilled the rest of the dough and baked later.  I didn’t feel like it made a difference.

These cookies are dangerously good.  I really liked the addition of just a little bit of cocoa powder and they are chock full of all kinds of chocolate!  I think they’d also be good with pecans for a little added crunch.