Cookbook review by Tracey Zabar
Here is a recipe for something delicious to start off a sweet year. This enormous book is a chocolate lover's dream. It contains step-by-step instructions, with illustrations and photographs, to guide you to make bonbons, tartlets, and an opera cake (Aunt Stacey’s favorite!) that is fancy dinner party-worthy. It also has very clear instructions on how to temper chocolate, which was the hardest thing I learned in culinary school. Today’s recipe is the simplest in the book—amazing chocolate chunk cookies.
Recipes excerpted with permission from The Ultimate Book of Chocolate by Melanie Dupuis, published by Hardie Grant Books.
Click on the book cover to buy:
CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE
WHAT IS IT?
Shortbread cookies with chocolate chips and walnuts.
HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE?
Preparation: 15 minutes Cooking: 10 minutes Refrigeration: 2 hours
SKILL REQUIRED
Softening butter
VARIATION
Replace the walnuts with macadamia nuts.
PLANNING, PREP AND STORAGE
Preparation:
Dough – cutting out – baking
Make the rolls of dough, wrap in cling film (plastic wrap) and keep them for up to 3 months in the freezer.
MAKES 24
120 g (4 oz) softened unsalted butter
60 g (2 oz) icing (confectioner’s) sugar
80 g (3 oz) brown sugar
100 g (3 1/2 oz) dark chocolate chips
100 g eggs (2 eggs)
200 g (7 oz) flour
1 g (1/4 teaspoon) salt
2 g (1/2 teaspoon) baking powder
80 g (3 oz) walnuts, chopped
1 In a mixing bowl (or in a stand mixer using a flat beater), cream the butter until soft and smooth, then add the icing sugar and brown sugar. Break the chocolate into smaller pieces with a knife. Add the lightly beaten eggs. In another bowl, mix the flour, baking powder and salt and add half of this to the butter-sugar mixture, then mix. When the mixture is smoothly blended, add the rest of the dry ingredients, the chocolate chips and chopped nuts.
2 Make a roll of dough about 6 cm (2 1/2 in) in diameter and wrap in cling film (plastic wrap). Leave to harden for 2 hours in the refrigerator.
3 Preheat the oven to 160°C (320°F/gas 4). Take the roll of dough out of the refrigerator and cut it into 1 cm (1/2 in) thick slices. Put them on a baking tray covered with baking paper.
4 Bake in the oven for about 10 minutes. The edges should be hard to the touch and the centre soft. Remove the baking tray from the oven and slide the sheet with the biscuits onto a worktop to halt the baking.
Tracey Zabar's Chocolate Chip Sweets: Celebrated Chefs Share Favorite Recipes is available here.
A delectable collection of innovative chocolate chip recipes by world-renowned chefs, pastry chefs, and bakers
Tracey Zabar's One Sweet Cookie Cookbook is available here.
A delicious collection of cookie recipes from extraordinary chefs, pastry chefs, and bakers. A great gift sure to delight anyone who loves to bake.
