So. Much. Chocolate.

So, after an almost chocolate-less week of baking, I decided it was time to delve into the Death By Chocolate cookbook.  This book is home to the recipe for the Death By Chocolate cake (on a week when I'm too busy to bake you'll get a whole post recapping that experience) but it also has several other delicious confections available for consumption.  This week I decided to make the "Absolutely Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge Cookies".  Hang on, let me wipe the drool off my keyboard.

The recipe itself is for Deep Dark Chocolate Fudge cookies but the "absolutely" part comes in when you add chocolate chips to the cookies. This cookbook is excellent and extremely specific which is good for a person like me.  However, I needed to disregard some of the instructions out of necessity.  For example, the recipe recommended using a paddle attachment for my mixer.  Silly cookbook thinking I have tools. Alas, I have no paddle attachment so I just mixed the good ol' fashioned way.  With an electric mixer. Moving on...

The recipe also called for Nestle's Unsweetened Cocoa. The author even goes so far as to add a note saying "I have specified Nestle cocoa for this recipe because it delivers the deep dark chocolate flavor implied by the name of the cookie." Wow. Apparently using any other cocoa will not deliver the deep dark chocolate flavor! So I went to my friendly neighborhood Big Y and surprise, surprise, they did not carry Nestle's Unsweetened Cocoa.  I had to settle for Hershey's and make sub par cookies that do not deliver the deep dark chocolate flavor. Sigh.

The Death By Chocolate cookbook also had some precious instructions that included sifting the flour, salt, baking soda, and cocoa onto wax paper.  Fortunately, my lovely mother bought me a sifter when she came to visit last weekend so I was able to successfully sift.  I also learned that there is apparently a difference when a recipe specifies "sifted flour" vs. "flour, sifted" (it has to do with when you measure the flour).  So, being the good cookbook minion that I am, I sifted those ingredients onto wax paper and you know what? I don't think it changed anything and it made a mess.  However, it did look kinda cool creating a white flour volcano which was then coated in cocoa and then sprinkled with the white of baking soda and salt. Also, sifting salt: completely pointless. It just goes through the sifter.

After sifting like a fiend, I had to melt a bunch of chocolate in my double boiler.  Oh, you want me to have a double boiler, Mr. Cookbook Author? Silly. I used the same technique as the last time I melted chocolate, namely, putting a few inches of water in a big bowl and microwaving it until the water is really hot and then putting a smaller bowl of chocolate inside the big bowl.  This was effective but it took a while so I think the water wasn't quite hot enough.  Oh well, the chocolate melted eventually. After that, things were fairly uneventful. The recipe did call for 3 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips (for the "absolutely" part, remember) but all I had left was about 1 cup of semi-sweet mini morsels.  Whoops.  So I suppose I didn't fully achieve the "absolutely" part and maybe just came as far as "almost surely".  That was a math/stat joke for anyone who's as big a nerd as me. I'm going to go hang my head in shame for a moment.

::shame::

Ok, I'm back. The last step after combining the ingredients is (obviously) baking. I was supposed to drop 2 level tablespoons of batter per cookie onto the baking sheet.  I obediently did that and realized that only about 9 cookies were going to fit on the pan.  Which meant I'd be baking for the next 4 hours or so. Also, those cookies were huge.  Methinks one shouldn't consume that much chocolate in one cookie so after the first batch I made normal people sized cookies.  Following about 2 and a half hours of baking (each batch took 18 minutes and I only have one baking sheet), I got to consume my creation.  So. Freaking. Good. I love these cookies.  I will probably love them more heated up with a little vanilla ice cream on top (something I plan on enjoying later) but I highly recommend this cookie recipe to anyone who loves chocolate. Yay! So here's a picture of my completed cookies:

Critical Reception:
The opinions on my watermelon slice cookies from last time were as I expected. People thought they were adorable but weren't really inclined to eat more than one.  They definitely needed more flavor but nobody seemed to dislike them and I got compliments on the cookies.  I also got asked by some professors if I need to be given more work to do. Whoops.