It is holiday baking time again and I’ve been tweaking recipes or riffing on old recipes in order to come up with things for this year’s holiday bakery box. One recipe I decided needed a new spin were the double chocolate cookies. This started out as a Mrs Fields recipe but over the years has gotten reworked.
First I decided to use dark chocolate chips instead of semi-sweet chocolate chips. I really like the Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Chips best. Using these is way easier than dicing up squares of bittersweet chocolate. Swapping in these chips upped the chocolate factor substantially.
Next I decided the chocolate needed a complement, something to rebalance the dark chocolate savory aspect. So I started halving the amount of chocolate chips and adding dried cherries. My instincts were spot on and I got rave reviews from my co-workers when I tested the changes on them last summer.
This year I decided the cookies needed some texture. I considered sprinkling sea salt on top. Dark chocolate and sea salt are a pretty typical pairing. However, I wasn’t sure this would alter the texture enough. Ultimately I decided to add macadamia nuts to the recipe. Why macademia nuts? First, when you don’t chop them and put them into a recipe as halves they don’t lose their crisp crunching texture which many nuts lose when you chop them and put them into a recipe. Plus size does matter when it comes to texture and macadamia halves add a literal bite of texture.
Taste testing of final product by the ultimate critic, my six year old, resulted in the comment “I don’t like these mummy. I LOVE these.” We will see how they fair with bakery box recipients