Hunky Chocolate Chip Cookies and All Chocolate Boston Cream Pie

A week or so ago after the chefs on Top Chef Just Desserts had a challenge to make bake sale treats, and one of the chefs made a CHUNKY Chocolate Cookie that the judges loved, I was talking with my friend, Anna, at Cookie Madness about the “chunky” cookies and I could have sworn that on Bravo's website where you can print the recipe that it had a typo and called the cookies “hunky” instead of chunky.  After I mentioned that to Anna, she tried to find what I was talking about on the website and couldn’t find anything that said “hunky”.   I was pretty adamant about seeing the typo and went to the website again to prove to myself that it indeed said hunky.  But I was surprised to find that it said chunky and I was just a little crazy in the head.   I thought a HUNKY cookie would be kinda fun.  Anna jokingly dared me to come up with such a cookie. 

I don’t take most dares too lightly, especially when they involve baking!

I thought about it and kept thinking I just need to make a really chunky chocolate chip cookie, full of things that would make it really chunky or hunky, but chunky doesn’t really mean the same as hunky.  When I think of hunky, I think of something that is good-looking.  Well good-looking is all in the eye of the beholder, so there’s really no telling what would make a cookie hunky to everyone. 

Then it popped into my head to literally make big, hunky cookies by using Big Hunks in the cookies.  Remember those candy bars?  They are a white, chewy nougat with peanuts in them.  I have always liked them, but haven’t even thought about them or eaten one for years.  I actually had to look at a number of stores just to find them and finally found them at the gas station/convenience store nearest to our house!

I have to say, these cookies turned out really well.  I tried chunks of the Big Hunk in lots of different ways in these cookies and actually liked them in all the ways I tried them, but think they looked the best with just a nice chunk of “hunk” on the top of them that I placed on the cookie as soon as it came out of the oven.  The cookies I baked WITH Big Hunk in it, oozed and spread out more, so they weren’t as pretty.  But I was pleasantly surprised that it didn’t harden up into rocks in the cookies.  The Big Hunk always stayed with its same texture no matter how I baked it.  I even did a few big cookies in a 4 inch cake pan with a big hunk of Big Hunk in the middle.  Those were great.  The cookie I came up with was full of chunky chocolate and peanuts as well.  Here’s the recipe I came up with.

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

6 tablespoons (3 ounces) unsalted butter, softened

1/4 cup (64 grams) peanut butter (I used chunky!)

1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons brown sugar (5 ounces or 142 grams)

1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (4 ounces or 113 grams)

1 large egg

2 tablespoons cream

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups all purpose flour, scooped and leveled (8 1/2 ounces)

3/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 plus 1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon coarse salt

1/2 cup roasted and salted peanuts

1 cup chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli 60% cacao chips)

2 ounce Big Hunk Candy Bar, chopped into chunks

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. 

Cream together the butter and peanut butter in the bowl of an electric mixer.  Add the sugar and brown sugar and beat for 2 minutes.  Scrape sides of bowl.  Add the egg, vanilla and cream and beat until well combined.  In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.  Whisk to sift.  Incorporated the dry ingredients with the wet, but only beat until just combined.  The dough will seem a little stiff, but it will scoop just fine.  Stir in the peanuts and chocolate with a wooden spoon.  You can stir in pieces of the candy or save it to add to the hot baked cookies.

Scoop the cookie dough on to baking sheets.  Bake for 10 minutes.  (The ones in 4 inch pans took 16 minutes.)  Cut and/or break pieces of the Big Hunk and put them on the baked cookies.  Let them sit on the baking sheets for a few minutes.  Remove to wire racks to cool. 

The big one with the candy hiding inside.

This one is from a different cookie I tried first, but they just weren’t hunky enough to me until I used some peanut butter and peanuts in the cookie dough. ;)  But you can see how the pieces of candy melted all over the cookie.  They still tasted great and the candy bar stayed its same chewy consistency.  If you really don’t like Big Hunk candy bars, as I know some really don’t, these are still great cookies without it.  But then they are just more chunky than hunky.

And that is how my idea of Hunky Chocolate Chip Cookies came to be.  Speaking of hunks—here’s mine.

He had a birthday last week.  I made him an All Chocolate Boston Cream Pie from Hershey’s website.  I followed the recipe for the cake and the filling, but decided on a dark chocolate ganache for the frosting.  This was pretty good cake.  The filling wasn’t the greatest and I’d fill it with something different next time, but the cake was nice and moist and of course, the ganache was great.

I sent Kevin on a silly little hunt around the house to find his few gifts.  The boys always get such a kick out of doing this. 

We love you, Daddy!  Thanks for all you do for our family!

I helped Taylor with a little school assignment last week to make a costume for a little paper cutout.  Taylor love frogs, so we came up with Super Froggy.

While we were working on that, Sam was sitting at the table very intently cutting paper, and cutting and cutting, lots of little pieces of paper. 

I asked him what he was doing and he said, in a tone that was like, “duh, Mom”, “Making a paper salad.”  Okay.  When he finished cutting, he asked for a lid to the container and put the bowl in the fridge.  Cute!