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| Thank you to Jen Davin for letting me model this apron while baking at her house in 2010. That striped one Just visible on the left was just far too boring. |
So being my first year of graduate school, I've often felt as though all fun has been drained from my life in a manner similar to some kind of parasite. The difference is that in grad school, you get smarter and, eventually, a degree you can use to smite your opposition in job interviews. Anyway, as a method of dealing with the fun-drain, I decided I was going to make some cookies. After a few months of experimenting with ingredients this is what I've come up with.
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| Cooling racks are a pretty great. Also, cookies. Sooo many cookies... |
_-_-_ Procrastinator's Delight _-_-_
(AKA: Dark-Chocolate-Blueberry-Cookies)
1 2/3 cups organic sugar (evaporated cane juice)
1 cup organic brown sugar
1 1/2 cups margarine or butter, melted
2 eggs (whites + yolks)
4 cups flour (or however much you need to to make the dough firm and easily scooped into balls)
1 1/3 tsp baking soda (add margarine, stir, then add eggs. The baking soda seems to react with the whites prematurely otherwise)
1 1/3 tsp of salt
1 cup coarsely chopped walnuts
1 1/2 cup fresh blueberries
2 organic dark chocolate bars, chopped coarsely
1 tablespoon peach vinegar (apple cider vinegar will work here too)
You may notice I say "organic" a lot in this recipe. I can't eat normal processed white or brown sugar. Something about it just makes my body very angry. Unrefined sugars however work just fine. So, if you can tolerate normal, refined sugar (brown or white, which are cheaper), feel free to use that instead. I haven't experimented with it, so your results may differ slightly from the recipe given.
Regarding the chocolate, I like the Endangered Species Chocolate (http://www.chocolatebar.com/shop/p-21-extreme-dark-chocolate.aspx) and Green and Black (http://greenandblacks.com/us/our-chocolates/bars/dark-85.html) personally. If you want to go more or less gourmet, I wont stop you. Just so long as it has a very high cocoa content, you'll be fine.
As for the blueberries, adding them to the dough before the flower is important to minimize smashing of the berries while mixing.
Now, other stuff you are going to need.
1 large mixing bowl
2 small bowls
1 cutting board
1 large knife you can use for chopping
1 large mixing spoon
A set of measuring spoons
A set of measuring cups
A metal tablespoon
A metal baking sheet
A spatula (for scraping the cooled cookies from the baking sheet)
1 oven
1 freezer
First, preheat your oven to 350 degrees. This way it will at te right temperature by the time you are done mixing everything together.
Coarsely chop the walnuts and set them aside in one of your small bowls. If you've never done this before, check out this video: http://www.ehow.com/video_2346591_chop-nuts.html
Next, cut the chocolate into small chunks. I usually cut each square of the dark chocolate bar into quarters, which makes for good sized pieces. Again, here's a video to give you a better idea of how to do this: http://www.ehow.com/video_4457985_chop-peanut-butter-chocolate-cookies.html
After chopping up the chocolate, set aside with the walnuts in the small bowl.
Add the sugars, salt, baking soda, margarine/butter, chocolate, eggs, blueberries, and walnuts together in the large bowl and stir until well mixed.
Now that everything else is well mixed together, here comes the part that's going to require some elbow grease. Slowly add the 4 cups of flour in small amounts until it's all mixed in. The dough should now be very dense, enough so that you can easily scoop a ball out of it with that metal tablespoon (or comparably sized scooping device). If you need to add more flour, do so in very small amounts, and make sure it's all mixed in before adding more.
Once you have the dough to the proper firmness, scoop out 9-12 balls (should be no bigger than a golf ball) onto one of the cookie sheets. You want them spaced far enough apart so they don't run into each other while cooking, as they will spread a bit. Place the cookie sheet into the oven for around 15 minutes. It does vary a bit, so just keep an eye on them and when they get to be golden brown, they're ready to come out. While that batch is cooking, scoop out a second tray of dough balls.
Once the first tray is done, take it out of the oven (don't forget those mits) and place on hot pads in a cool area. I have even gone so far as putting them under a fan. The reason is that these cookies are very hard to remove from the tray whole until they are cooled. Once the cookies are cooled, use that spatula to remove them. It's best to scrap them off with one well aimed push of the spatula. Slowly trying to pry them off usually just results in broken cookies (very sad, but still delicious). While it is cooling, place the second tray in for whatever amount of time you've observed from the first batch is necessary.
Keep repeating these baking steps until you either run out of dough, or need to call it a night. This recipe makes a whhoooolle lot of cookies, but fortunately the dough will keep in the freezer for a good long while, so you have plenty of time to finish baking it later at your convenience.
Well, that's pretty much it.
Hope you like it! Let me know if you have any thoughts or feedback!
*** Note: For a slightly different version of this recipe, replace walnuts with diced almonds, the dark chocolate with mint-dark chocolate (or if you can't find this, the regular dark chocolate is still good), and the frozen blueberries with frozen raspberries. Still good, just a bit different. Everything else is exactly the same. I'm going to try adding peppermint margarine at some point to try and up the mintyness. I'll keep you posted.***
