Baking

Nothing beats the smell of fresh baked cookies... straight out of the oven. I love baking during the winter, because you get fresh goodies and the kitchen is lovely and warm.

Chewy Chocolate Mounds

Of all my cookie recipes, this one has been the most requested. It's dense, it's moist and so darn chocolate-y that you'll find it hard to eat more than 2 or 3 in one sitting. These are fiddly to make though and require you to get your hands into it. I also used the best chocloate that I could get (85% cacao solids)

Chewy Chocolate Mounds

Ingredients

150g sugar (1.5 cups)
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla essence
115g melted butter (.5 cup)
400 squares melted chocolate (12 oz)
225g flour (2 cups)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped almonds or walnuts (optional)

Melt the chocolate and butter in a bain marie (I used a saucepan with water and have a mixing bowl sitting just on the water.) Be careful that you don't make the chocolate too hot.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla. Blend in the melted chocolate and butter. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl and add to chocolate mixture and stir until all ingredients are thoroughly mixed.

If you are using nuts, add them now. Freeze the mixture for at least 4-5 hours, overnight is better. Using a tablespoon, scoop up the mixture and shape with your hands to approximately 1-1/2 inches in diameter.

Place on cookie sheet at least 2 inches apart. Bake in a 175C/350F degree oven for 10 - 12 minutes or until done. For a soft cookie center, remove from oven while cookies are still soft in the center.

You can sprinkle powder suger over the cookies before serving. I never do because I find it too sweet.

I also made some Basler Brunsli (Chocolate Almond Cookie), but had mixed success since I ended up burning a batch and setting off the smoke alarm. It's a bit depressing to smell charred cookies. It was the first time that I used this recipe and I'm not sure that I would recommend it. The cookies taste ok, but would require a bit of tweaking as the cookie dough was far too moist to work with the cookie cutter and in the end I had to just make balls and flatten to shape.

Basler Brunsli, unfortunately, there was a burnt batch

My butter cookies were OK. I made them so that there would be something for the non-chocolate lovers. Instead of using lemon zest, I used orange.

I have no idea how those food bloggers take such appealing photos... I swear that by the time these cookies were out of the oven, I was covered from head to toe in chocolate and the kitchen was pitched black.

Posted by atu at December 23, 2007 07:34 PM | TrackBack