Chocolate lovers, rejoice! The chocolate world just keeps getting better with the surge in “craft chocolate” bringing awareness to what a difference quality makes. We have the chocolate cookie recipe from a new book on craft chocolate by Megan Giller to prove it. High-quality chocolate puts this home-baked cookie over the top. Read on:
Paralleling the rise of specialty coffee companies and craft beer breweries, the craft chocolate industry has exploded over the past decade, bringing more and more artisan products to the market. Modern chocolatiers are turning out gorgeous truffles, beautiful bars and baking ingredients for use in the highest-quality desserts. Some makers oversee the process “bean-to bar,” even traveling to the farms where cocoa beans are harvested, selecting specific beans, roasting and grinding the beans and making them into finished chocolate. Chocolate Noise blogger Megan Giller’s new book, Bean to Bar Chocolate; America’s Craft Chocolate Revolution: The Origins, the Makers, and the Mind-Blowing Flavors is a thorough guide to the best craft chocolate: how it’s made, recipes to cook with it, how to pair it, specific brands and where to find them.
With light-hearted text, amazing photographs and fun illustrations, Giller provides an education in the details of production and the key founders of the industry. In 22 recipes, she provides instructions for making easy home treats such as chocolate sorbet and chocolate torte to advanced dishes such as truffles requiring tempering for bold souls who want to challenge themselves to master the chocolatiers’ hallmark skill. The book is available at select bookstores and through Amazon.com.
Giller will be on a book tour throughout the U.S. in coming weeks. You can find details of events in Boston; New York City; Asheville, North Carolina and more on her website, Chocolate Noise.
Oh, and here’s that wonderful recipe from chef Miro Uskokovic she graciously shares from the book along with her headnotes, including recommended products to use:
Triple Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Excerpted from Bean-to-Bar Chocolate © by Megan Giller, photography © by Judy Horton, used with permission from Storey Publishing.
Recipe from Miro Uskokovic, pastry chef at Gramercy Tavern and Untitled at the Whitney
Yield: About 4 dozen large cookies
I lucked into an event a few years ago where Miro Uskokovic was serving piles of these ultimate chocolate chip cookies. I must have eaten about 10, and I snuck another couple home (no judgment!) Since then I’ve visited Untitled at the Whitney (the museum’s restaurant) over and over, for cookies as much as art.
You’d never know it, but Miro uses Thomas Keller’s brand of gluten-free flour for his version of these cookies. (It’s called Cup4Cup, and you can buy it from Amazon, among other places.) He says he originally tried the gluten-free flour to have the option but liked it so well that he stuck with it. The recipe works with regular all-purpose flour too. Miro recommends Kerrygold butter and Guittard baking chocolate wafers in particular. I like that idea, because while the recipe benefits from high-quality chocolate, you don’t need to use single-origin chocolate in this one. One of my other favorite parts about it is that it showcases three types of chocolate — dark, milk, and white — and how they play off one another to make what the New York media call the best chocolate chip cookie in the city.
Ingredients
1-1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1-1/2 cups light brown sugar
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon kosher salt
3 eggs
2 egg yolks
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2-1/4 cups dark chocolate chunks (72 percent cocoa)
1-1/2 cups milk chocolate chunks
1 cup white chocolate chunks
Sea salt, for garnish
Special equipment
Stand mixer (though you can easily substitute a hand mixer if that’s all you have)
Directions
1. In a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment, combine the butter, brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla, and kosher salt. Mix at low speed for 30 seconds.
2. Add the eggs and egg yolks and mix at medium speed until the mixture resembles thick frosting, 5 to 8 minutes. You should see the contents double in size and get lighter and fluffier.
3. In a second bowl, sift together the flour and baking soda.
4. Switch the mixer attachment from whisk to paddle. Add the flour and baking soda and mix until just barely incorporated.
5. Add the chocolate chunks and mix to combine at slow speed or by hand.
6. Transfer the dough to an airtight container and put it in the fridge to rest overnight. If you’re short on time, you can pull it out of the fridge after 2 to 4 hours.
7. Remove the dough from the fridge and let it come to room temperature. Preheat the oven to 375°F (191°C).
8. Using an ice cream scoop, scoop evenly sized balls of dough (roughly 2 tablespoons each) onto an ungreased baking sheet, making sure to leave a few inches of room around each. Sprinkle each cookie with a pinch of sea salt. Bake for 8 to 9 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown and the cookie is still soft inside. Let cool (almost) completely.
Eat while slightly warm, with a glass of cold whole milk.
