A Foray Into Creativity

This week's double dose of baking is brought to you by wanting to share cookies with friends (and, of course, viewers like you). I'm going to visit a friend this weekend and wanted to bring him some cookies that I made but it seems that I have none left at all in my possession. Also, my office is out of emergency "My God, why are my students' Minitab answers so wrong?" cookies. So I wanted to make something easy but delicious and at the same time not make the same thing twice. Well, the Death By Chocolate cookbook comes to my rescue again. Recall I made the Absolutely Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge cookies a few weeks ago. They were delicious, beloved by all, and are a good traveling cookie. But obviously, I couldn't make the same thing again. So I decided to add some twists to the original recipe. The first twist is that I've had about two cups of dark chocolate chips in my cupboard for a few weeks and want to get rid of them. The recipe calls for 3 cups of semi sweet chocolate chips (which I totally skimped on last time) so I will substitute two of those cups with dark chocolate chips. I literally have no idea how this will turn out but I figure more chocolate can't be a bad thing, right?

Speaking of more chocolate, the second modification I'm making actually involves a separate recipe. The cookie recipe notes that if you're feeling ambitious, you can dip the cookies in some chocolate ganache. Hmm, apparently this blog doesn't recognize ganache as a real word. That's annoying. Well, ganache is real (is properly spelled) and is delicious. The cookbook points out that there are "several ganache recipes to choose from" but when I checked there were only two. Liars. Two doesn't qualify as several. Everybody knows that several is generally more than three! Regardless, I needed to decide between the Semi-Sweet Chocolate Ganache and the Ultimate Chocolate Ganache. I'm still laughing at the fact that I just presented that as if there was a choice to be made. I'm already making Absolutely Extra Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge cookies (the Extra because of the dark chocolate chips which should make the cookies even more deep dark) so I might as well take the next logical step to make them the ULTIMATE ABSOLUTELY EXTRA DEEP DARK CHOCOLATE FUDGE cookies. Or maybe we'll just call them Chocolate Coma Cookies. Or how about Chocolate Insanity Cookies? Perhaps Friggin' Chocolately Cookies? I'll keep thinking on what to call these things.

So, this being the 2nd time that I'm making this basic recipe, I got a little lazy. But only lazy in the most practical of senses, I promise. For instance, I did not sift together the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda like last time. Way too silly. I also knew that I should get the chocolate melting first so that I wouldn't be stalled halfway through the recipe waiting for chocolate to melt. I'm learning! This was a very smooth recipe with one (hopefully) small exception. I kinda ran out of brown sugar. I was only about a tablespoon short in a recipe that calls for a cup and a half of brown sugar so I'm hoping it's not too big a deal. I know baking is an exact science and I even googled brown sugar substitutes but as I don't have any molasses, I was kinda stuck. And there was no way I was going out in the pouring rain to get ingredients. No way. So, let's all hope they turn out ok, shall we?

As I was baking the cookies (they take quite a while), I got started on the Ultimate Chocolate Ganache. By that, I just mean that I measured out all the ingredients and got stuff ready to go because ganache takes approximately 5 minutes to make. I did take a moment to marvel though at all of the chocolate going into this recipe. I decided to cut the recipe in half since I don't really think I need a quart of ganache in my life at the particular moment in time. After some super difficult division, the recipe called for 3 ounces of unsweetened chocolate, 2 ounces of white chocolate, and 6 ounces of semisweet chocolate. It just looked like so much chocolate.

Oh, and while I'm waiting for the cookies to bake, allow me to share this gem from the Death By Chocolate cookbook. "Why an ultimate ganache? Why drive an automobile capable of going 120 miles per hour when the speed limit does not exceed 65 miles per hour? The answer is that when you need it -- it's there. Quite simply, this is a supernal food. Just imagine a mountain cabin, a mellow fire, chilled Iron Horse Blanc de Blancs, and great big California strawberries to dip into a bowl of slightly warm ultimate ganache." Ummmm...what? The first time I read that it just boggled my mind. I want to make fun of it so badly but the words won't quite come. No wait, yes they will. There is never a need to go 120 miles per hour. Ever. It's unsafe, you crazy drivers. Next, while I'm loving the idea of strawberries dipped in ultimate ganache, the author seems to have an oddly specific scenario in mind that seems to imply that there is someone else in that mountain cabin. Or at least I hope so. Otherwise, it just feels kinda sad. All of these recipes have little "chef's touch" sections that are filled with practical and helpful tips and occasional anecdotes about where the recipe comes from but I'm pretty surprised that this particular chef's touch made it past the editor. That's all I wanted to say on that but dear readers, feel free to jump in with your own thoughts on this mysterious passage in a cookbook.

Woot! Ganache time! Ganache is actually quite easy. It's just boiling sugar, butter, and heavy cream and then pouring the boiling mixture over the three types of chocolate I have in a bowl. Although, the recipe did recommend a stainless steel bowl which, of course, I did not have. I figured Pyrex would suffice. Considering I haven't heard any glass explode yet, I think we're good. After letting it sit for 5 minutes I stirred until smooth and now I have to let it cool to room temperature before dipping the cookies. I guess I could've planned this a little better but I was watching Big Bang Theory. Which is NOT crappy tv and I'm only now starting to get into the show. Which is odd because I'm a huge dork. And I get almost all of their nerd jokes. See why I needed a hobby?

Ok, so the ganache is cool enough now and I began methodically dipping the cookies into the ganache. I figured that covering half the cookie would be most reasonable and would look cute. So I got into a nice rhythm of moving the cookies from the cooling rack to the wax paper covered cooling rack by way of bowl of ganache. At one point I got a little ganache on my knuckle and gave it a taste. Oh. My. God. I just wanted to curl up and die because nothing could possibly ever taste that good again. Anyway, I got so into the rhythm of this that I actually missed the first 10 minutes of Grey's Anatomy (there's your bad tv!) which isn't exactly a disaster but it was more that I found the whole process so relaxing that I completely lost track of time. Not a bad way to spend an evening. Now I'm just waiting for the ganache to harden before I can taste one. Waiting is painful. Oh, and I had way too much ganache, of course, so now the extra is sitting in a plastic container in my fridge just waiting for a rainy day.

I grabbed a cookie out of the fridge before the ganache even really finished hardening because it's getting close to my bedtime and I really wanted to try one of these cookies tonight. Holy. Crap. It's the most amazing cookie I've ever tasted. The ganache works perfectly with the extremely ultimately chocolatey whatever cookie and I don't even quite know how to describe it. Maybe I'm just a chocolate fiend but these cookies are incredible. I actually want another one but I know I probably shouldn't since I have to sleep in order to teach my students how to do statistics tomorrow but wow. I know my gushing over these cookies is probably getting annoying so I'll wrap it up. Here's a picture of the Incredible Amazing Ultimately Absolutely Deepest Dark Chocolate Fudge Cookies:

Disclaimer: I will not be held responsible for any residual drooling that may or may not land on readers' keyboards.


Critical Reception:
Well. Apparently nobody had the same objections to the cheesecake triangles that I did. I brought the triangles to the stat dept, stored them in the fridge because I was there a bit early, went to my office to do some work, and almost immediately was asked where the cheesecake triangles were. Not that I minded being interrupted, mind you, because my probability homework is way hard this week but I was impressed that someone discovered what treat I had made within a couple hours of my blog post going up. So when it was colloquium tea time, I took the cheesecake triangles out of the fridge and people immediately jumped on them. I estimate I brought about 50 triangles with me (they were somewhat small). Even with a smaller than usual pre-colloquium socializing group, I'd estimate about 20 of the triangles were gone by the time the talk actually started. By the way, that means people were eating more than one. I saw someone eat 4 of them. Which is fine, I'm happy people were enjoying them. After the talk, I walked back to the conference room thinking there'd be at least 20 or so left and I'd have to put them in the fridge with a sign telling people to eat them or something. I walked in and my jaw actually dropped as I looked at a completely empty plate. I believe I actually exclaimed "No way!" and made the couple of people working in the conference room stare at me like I was crazy (which I'm not denying). So I'm going to go ahead and assume that people liked them because they're gone now! A+ for the cheesecake triangles.