Jessie’s white chocolate chips

I’m not really a cookie person. The only cookies I can’t resist are brownies. So when I came across a white chocolate chip cookie recipe that said it was for baking brownies masquerading as cookies, I couldn’t say pass. These cookies are just decadently wonderful — so rich, so divine. The top is dry, flaky and crisp but the inside is moist and chewy. I’m thinking that, next time, I’ll use the same recipe to bake brownies with walnuts.

If you’re wondering who Jessie is, she is the woman behind The Hungry Mouse where I got the recipe for these gorgeous cookies.

This recipe makes 18 2-1/2 inch cookies.

Ingredients:

6 oz. pf unsweetened chocolate
4 tbps. of butter
1/3 c. of flour
1/4 tsp. of baking powder
1/8 tsp. of salt
2 large eggs
1-1/3 c. of sugar
1-1/2 tsp. of instant coffee granules (I used Nescafe Gold)
1 tsp. of vanilla extract
3/4 c. of white chocolate chips

One of the reasons I was encouraged to bake these cookies was because Jessie used the same brand of baking chocolate that I bought about two weeks ago. I liked how her baked cookies looked and I figured that if I used the same chocolate, the quality would be the same. You can use whatever brand is available but I do encourage you to choose a good quality brand.

So, chop the unsweetened chocolate, place in a bowl with the butter, then place the bowl over simmering water.

Allow the chocolate and butter to melt, stirring after a minute.

Make sure that there are no lumps before you remove the bowl from the water. Cool the chocolate mixture while you do the other steps.

Preheat the oven to 350^oF.

In a bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In a large bowl, crack the eggs and add the sugar.

Add the instant coffee granules too. Pour in the vanilla extract.

Beat everything together. Jessie recommends 11 to 13 minutes over medium-high speed of the electric mixer; I mixed mine for 10 minutes over high speed. The lengthy mixing is to incorporate as much air into the mixture as possible. With a stand mixer, 11 to 13 minutes is no problem but with a hand mixer, well, I had to make some adjustments.

By the end of 10 minutes, the mixture will be quite thick.

Pour in the melted chocolate and butter, scraping the bowl to make sure you get all the chocolatey goodness in.

Stir a few times by hand…

… then let the mixer do the rest of the work. Two minutes over high speed and the mixture should look like what you see in the photo above.

Now, add the flour mixture.

Fold the flour mixture into the chocolate mixture — carefully so as not to break the precious air bubbles — until smooth.

Add the white chocolate chips and mix to distribute evenly. So, that’s your cookie batter.

Drop the cookie batter by heaping teaspoonfuls on a parchment lined cookie sheet about two inches apart. Bake in a 350^oF oven for 13 minutes flat.

Remove the cookie sheet from the oven. You will see cracks on top of the cookies — that’s normal. That means they’re sufficiently cooked.

Allow the cookies to cool on the cookie sheet for about five minutes before transferring them to a cooling rack. The cookies are very soft when they come out of the oven and if you attempt to move them to a rack right away, they will fall apart. So, leave them be for at least five minutes.

Don’t worry if the cookies feel wet and soft to the fingers. As they cool, the outside hardens and turns crisp and quite dry. Transfer the cookies to a rack, cool for a further 10 to 15 minutes. Actually, we couldn’t wait that long. I think we started eating them after they had cooled for only five minutes on the rack.

These white chocolate chip cookies are very dense and rich — you can gauge from the small amount of flour as against the six ounces of chocolate.

Next time, I’ll use larger white chocolate chips so that my cookies will have a less bumpy appearance after baking. Aside from that, there’s not much that can be done to improve the recipe. It’s simply perfect.