More Cheese More Chocolate

Every once in a while my ice cream habit gets a bit out of hand, and I realize that I need to slow it down with the desserts for a while.  I don’t have the willpower to completely eliminate dessert, and life is too short for such drastic measures anyway.  Instead, I consider it an opportunity to broaden my horizons and try other desserts that are a bit healthier.  I’ll admit that sometimes the actual result of my good intentions is a handful of fresh berries on top of my ice cream, but this time I took the ice-cream-free route and made chocolate chip cookies with whole wheat flour.  I’m sure they would be delicious eaten with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream (or with ice cream sandwiched between two cookies), but that would defeat my purpose.  With two cups of sugar and a cup of butter, these are not a health food, but if you’re going to eat a chocolate chip cookie anyway, it can’t hurt to have one made exclusively with whole wheat flour.

The recipe that I used is from Kim Boyce’s Good to the Grain, and you can find it here.  You can find an altered version that adds oatmeal to the mix and looks super delicious here.

I was always under the impression that whole wheat flour had to be supplemented with all-purpose flour in baked goods, and this recipe makes it clear that that’s not the case.  There’s more depth to these cookies than ones made from all-purpose flour, and they’re anything but chocolate-speckled bricks.

I baked these a day or two before I took off for Iowa and brought most of them home with me.  My brother housed a number of them, so they are both tasty and excellent fuel for several hours of nonstop bird watching.  My parents liked them, too, and if there hadn’t been Garrett’s caramel corn right next to the cookies, I think my dad would have eaten just as many as Bobby did.

After my last batch of chocolate chip cookies, I was so in love that I thought I’d never try another chocolate chip cookie recipe in my life.  The batch quickly disappeared, but so did my desire to forever be exclusive with Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies.  It’s not that there was anything wrong with those cookies; they were the best chocolate chip cookies that I’d ever made.  I just like variety – different textures, different amounts of chocolate, different additions.  I’m not ready to be exclusive with any chocolate chip cookie just yet.

I returned to the Midwest Living article on the best chocolate chip cookies and decided to make the ones that earned top honor.  These cookies contain a double dose of chocolate and a healthy amount of rolled oats, both good qualities.  They’re also gigantic, which, coupled with the fact that their real name is pretty wordy, is why I dubbed them “Monster Chocolate Chip Cookies.”

Lindsay’s Chocolate Cafe Chocolate Chip Cookies (a.k.a. Monster Chocolate Chip Cookies)

From Midwest Living, April 2010

*Amounts adjusted to make a half batch*

• 1 1/4 cup rolled oats
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 2 ounces milk chocolate bar, grated
• 3/4 cup chopped walnuts or pecans

• Preheat oven to 375.
• Mix the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt in a medium bowl.
• Beat the butter in the bowl of an electric mixer for 30 seconds.  Add sugars, and beat until combined, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.  Beat in egg and vanilla until combined.  Beat in as much of the flour mixture as you can, stirring any remaining bits by hand.  Add chocolate chips, grated chocolate, and nuts.  Stir to combine.
• Use a cookie or ice cream scoop to drop 3 tbsp balls of dough a few inches apart onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

• Bake for 9 to 10 minutes, until edges are lightly browned.  Cool on cookie sheet for one minute before transferring to a wire rack.

I didn’t set out to find a fantastic chocolate chip cookie recipe when I decided to organize my cooking magazines a few days ago; I set out to group Bon Appetits with Bon Appetits, Food and Wines with Food and Wines, and Cooks Illustrateds with Cooks Illustrateds.  In the mess of magazines, I found one lonely copy of Midwest Living, and a single copy of a magazine not entirely devoted to cooking has no place in my cooking magazine collection.  Before adding it to the recycle pile, though, I flipped through the pages to make sure that there was nothing contained within that I couldn’t live without.  As it turns out, I can’t live without an article on the Midwest’s best cookies.

Did I mention that the article contained six recipes for chocolate chip cookies?  Because it did, and I felt that it was my obligation as a food blogger to try one of those recipes to share with you.  I opted for the Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies from a bakery in Wisconsin, and judging by the results, I find it hard to believe that any of the other five are better than this one.  However, in the interest of fairness, I should probably do further research.  In the meantime, you should make these cookies.

Krista’s Chocolate Chip Pecan Cookies

from Midwest Living, April 2010

(Amounts listed below are for 1/2 of the original recipe.  The halved recipe yielded about 20 3-inch cookies.)

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup cake flour*
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
• 1/2 cup + 2 tbsp packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 tbsp vanilla
• 12 oz semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
• 1 1/2 cups pecan pieces

*Cake flour substitute: 1 1/2 tbsp cornstarch + enough all-purpose flour to reach 3/4 cup

Note: My two favorite things about these cookies were the large pieces of pecans and the high ratio of chocolate to cookie.  I’d recommend not chopping the pecans much (or just using a bag of pecan pieces and not chopping at all) and using Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips because the disc shape pretty much ensures a mouthful of chocolate in each bite.

1. Preheat oven to 375. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flours, salt, and baking soda.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter for 30 seconds.  Add the sugars, and beat until combined.  Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition.  Add the vanilla, and mix to combine.  Add the flour mixture, and beat on low until combined (you might need to stir in the last bit by hand). Add the chocolate chips and nuts, and stir by hand until they’re evenly distributed.
3. Using a cookie or ice cream scoop, drop balls of dough onto ungreased or parchment-lined cookie sheets.  (I wanted larger cookies, so I used an ice cream scoop to form mounds slightly larger than golf balls.)  Bake for 11-14 minutes, or less for smaller cookies. The cookies are done when they’re slightly browned around the edges and the centers are set but still appear slightly under-baked. Cool on the cookie sheets for one minute before transferring to a rack to cool completely.

Best served with a cold glass of milk.