I Need Chocolate
It’s been another bad day.* The microphone for the built in web cam arrived (finally), was installed and I wasted about an hour experimenting, and . . . the first try after the Computer Man left went fine, aside from the fact that I look ninety-four years old and mental, but apparently the technology was hoping for someone young and cute and cutting edge, and is sulking. Technological sulking is manifesting in two ways: (a) about one go in three it declines to record. You press the button and the little red light comes on and everything, but when you go to stop it it won’t stop. And you press and you press and you press and then the screen goes black. Then you do exactly the same next time and it works fine, except: (b) since the all-systems-go first trial the camera and the microphone have slid about a word out of sync which makes me look a hundred and six and dangerously mental.
And five hours after the Computer Man departed I discovered he’d left me on line. And I pay by the hour.
And the hellhounds . . . well, at least the appointment with the vet is finally tomorrow.
Someone commented a few days ago that she was making chocolate chip cookies and had put some cocoa powder in the batter ‘experimentally’. I wrote back that you can also melt chocolate in the batter. She replied . . . expressing interest, I believe. On the assumption that what interests one reader of a chocolate addict’s blog will interest other readers of a chocolate addict’s blog, I give you:
Double Whammy Chocolate Chip Cookies
4 100 g bars good dark cooking/eating chocolate or rough equivalent.
This is the not-rocket-science moment. The original-American-recipe calls for 2 6-oz packages of semi-sweet chocolate chips, but that was back in the days before the chocolate snob market had exploded, and by the time you could get chocolate chips over here** I wouldn’t touch the nasty low-chocolate-percentage things. So I buy 70% bars, and I chop them. You don’t have to do it at all evenly, and it makes the kitchen smell inspiring (although I recommend caution if you want to lick the knife): by the time you’re pulling cookies out of the oven, than which there is no better smell, you’ve already done all the work.
If you do maths, you may wish to protest that 200 g is significantly more than 6 ounces.*** Well, yes, but I said it wasn’t rocket science, and when it’s chocolate, more is better. If you want to do the substitution exactly, be my guest.
Melt half your chocolate with 3 T butter. I am, as previously observed, a lazy slut, and the fact is I never do the full bain-marie thing, but I also now have an Aga, and chocolate melts very nicely and gently sitting in a little pot on the warm surface between the plates/burners. But melting chocolate with some butter makes it a lot less high risk for people with ordinary boring stoves/cookers. Although I daresay the people who are carefully melting 170 g instead of 200 g chocolate will also be doing it in a bain-marie. However you get there, let this cool.
Beat together:
¾ c sugar
1 egg
1 ½ tsp vanilla
Beat in chocolate. I usually haven’t let it cool enough, so I beat it in hard while pouring in a very thin stream.
Stir in:
½ c sifted flour
½ tsp baking powder
You can also add up to 1 ½ c chopped nuts. I always used to, but as I’ve got older and even more obsessive I find I mostly want my chocolate experiences pure. So I don’t.
If you’re using nuts, stir them in last with the chopped chocolate/chocolate chips.
Drop in small spoonfuls on ungreased† cookie sheets. 350 F about ten minutes.
I usually make these in double batches-the recipe multiplies very readily; I think I’ve had it up to quadruple in Christmas-cookie season-although this does mean you are getting through scary amounts of chocolate. I think the real purpose of all the nuts is to stretch the batter without diluting the chocolate.
These cookies are very fragile till they cool, so slap everybody’s hands away. Including yours. But you can lick the bowl. Tell any importunate children that when they’re older they can make their own cookies and lick their own bowls.
* It had started out looking like rather a good day. It’s still inappropriately cold for April but less wind and more blue sky. We went out to Montmorency’s Folly to check on the bluebells, which seem pretty unbothered by yesterday’s blizzard. As are, to my total amazement, both my New Zealand clematises.^ Maybe they’re waiting for me to relax, and then they’ll collapse. When we got back from our walk I put the clematis marmoraria out for a few hours of sunlight-and speaking of thriving against the odds, it’s flowering-and finished making the bread which had been seething and sponging overnight. Then the Computer Man showed up and things started going downhill.
^ It was snowing again last night when we came back from the mews. If I weren't very careful of Peter's neighbours, especially at 1 am, there would have been language. There was certainly a lot of intense muttering back at the cottage as I dragged things indoors. To the hellhounds’ fascination.
** Eighteen years ago you could not, any store I was ever in. And if you asked, they smirked at you because you had a funny accent, and said there was no call for whatever you were asking for. Every country has patronising gits, and a lot of them work in retail.
*** http://www.metric-conversions.org/weight-conversion.htm Have I mentioned lately how much I love the web for this kind of thing? It really does make me feel like I’m living in a Jules Verne novel. Something retro futuristic.
† Yaaaay. Although I use parchment paper these days so greasing cookies sheets is not the tyranny it was.