Dark Milk White Chocolate Cookies – Triple Chocolate Cookies

OK Forget reading the whole post….I just get sucked into details and go blah blah when I like something.

I’m starting this posting back to front, I’ve just read what I’ve posted and it’s rather long.  Because I don’t want that to get in the way of anyone trying this recipe,  I’m just going to say it’s so easy peasy, crispy outside, gooey middle, look at the photo above, it only has butter, sugar, flour and chocolate – that’s it!  You don’t need a beater and at a pinch you don’t need a wooden spoon just your hand.  So don’t delay and just skip down to the bottom and read the bit about cutting chocolate and oven temperature.

Cookies or biscuits I am guessing must be the most searched for, written or blogged about food item on the net. Everyone will have their version of chocolate chip cookies and many many recipes will be delicious but that’s hardly surprising when you start off with butter, sugar, flour and maybe an egg and your favourite chocolate, all making a lovely crisp and gooey sweet delectable, addictive morsel accompanying your favourite drink; how can you not fall in love?

I have been making these triple chocolate cookies for a few years now and however many other recipes I’ve tried I always come back to these, the family, friends and people who I’ve never met demand I make more of these. They get whipped up in a dash with no thinking process involved they’re so incredibly easy to do so easy to remember and it does not matter which way you start off or how askew the recipe goes it always ends up in the same place; a plate full of scrumptious food for your soul a worthy contender in your repertoire. My oldest daughter is now better known at school on the sheer power of these cookies, groups of people she hasn’t met know of her mum’s cookies. There are conversations amongst the teenagers where these cookies act as a reference point, “…oh yeah…Claudia’s mum cookies…” a respectful sigh follows, before nonsense chatter resumes. Last summer when she had some friends over one of them couldn’t eat through her discomfort of having her teeth brace’s tightened a few hours beforehand, she mash the cookie into crumbs in order to fit it through her barely opened mouth.

How These Cookies Began
These cookies were originally something else I came across in a freebie booklet attached to a food magazine that contained nuts, raisins and orange flavouring and caught my eye because they contained no egg, I’m always looking for recipes with no eggs for middle daughter, I stripped the recipe to the basics and successfully make cookies for her. I was happy with the simplicity of it and I wanted to make cookies for the oldest daughter using all three different types of chocolate. I just kept adding a terrifying amount of chocolate, no scientific reason, it was the easiest way for me to remember the ratio, 100g dark 100g milk and 100g of white chocolate.  I really need all the help I can when it comes to remembering things plus most packs of chocolate I buy come in either 100g or 200g making it a snitch to divide up.  And the second helping factor was the butter amount of 250g, it’s one pack of butter, any recipe that starts with one whole pack of butter is going to be sinfully good and again requires no weighing.  This dough practically makes itself.

It’s funny how through my lack of live brain cells and downright laziness I stumbled across the right balance with the three chocolates and anyone that hates white chocolate or hates milk chocolate or hates dark chocolate loves these cookies. The three components blend between the buttery sweeten dough and merge to make a harmonious composition where the dark chocolate balances out the sweetness and provides one of the most important factors in a warm cookie, the melted goo. The white chocolate chunks that stick out ( time in hand I would purposefully make them stick out) burn a little making it the most attractive way to eat white chocolate, this coming from someone who doesn’t eat white chocolate, and if you don’t believe me just read David Labovitz entry on caramelised white chocolate. And the milk chocolate is there because…well if you really push me I’m not sure if I can single out it’s contribution but it’s certainly adding something to the party, like the right piece of jewellery to go with that little black dress, it just finishes the ensemble.

The Perfect Cookies That Weren’t So Perfect
I made the dough from the NY Times “Perfect Cookie” article after coming across it through Chez Pim and Smitten Kitchen blogs because it intrigued me firstly why they were having trouble with the dough and secondly anything that says ‘the perfect’ something always catches my attention. And although the dough I made didn’t make as flat cookies as theirs ended up, (perhaps because I didn’t pay attention to the method just the ingredients) the family and I were notably unimpressed with it, could not see the benefit of adding strong bread flour, or the improvement of leaving the dough the extra day and extra two days. They demand the triple cookies back and I, like the dutiful person that I am (yes, hardly to believe I know) happily obliged.
Having harped on earlier about the ménage a trois of chocolates, I have made this dough with just dark chocolate or just milk chocolate or added nuts and very nice they are too. If using one type of chocolate bring down the whole amount of chocolate to 200g, it’s a bit too rich if using 300g of the same chocolate.

Why The Dough Is Delicious
This dough is essentially a shortbread dough, a high content of butter and for this reason the quality of the butter matters, it doesn’t have to be organic because that doesn’t necessarily by itself make it wonderful but it should be a butter of quality, one you’re happy to spread on bread and enjoy its taste.  I’ve come across Cornish butter in larger Tesco’s stores that has the loveliest yellow hue but I also like the butter in Waitrose made in small batches using West Country milk, neither of which are organic, Rachel’s also make good butter and I’m partial to Normandy butter but when I have such good home grown butter I’ll stick to those.

In pretty much all my baking I don’t use unsalted butter because I chose butter that is not over salty and I don’t have to control the salt. In dessert recipes you’ll often see the request for unsalted butter and then follows a quantity for salt too, this way you can control how much salt to add to your sweet recipes. A tiny amount of salt balances the sweetness in a recipe and that’s why you’ll see good cooks adding it. Butter, sugar and flour is the basic shortbread recipe just like this one, I haven’t added or found the need to include egg, the dough binds itself well, the large amount of butter requires little moisture to amalgamate everything and it sticks together beautifully.

Dark Chocolate, Milk Chocolate, White Chocolate

The choice of chocolate now available in your average supermarkets is great, the photo shows just some choice in 2 of my local supermarkets.  It seems everyone is in on the act of either producing and selling single country’s cocoa or single estate cocoa or Fairtrade or organic or one without soya lecithin (harder to find) or with real vanilla seeds or purer without any flavourings. I could talk in detail about specialist chocolatier like Damian Allsop who makes dark chocolate truffles without any cream to let the cocoa flavour be purer, and thanks to my brother’s generosity I’ve tasted his chocolate and raspberry preserve, very nice, and lots of obscure flavoured chocolate truffles. But this recipe is about making cookies with lots and lots of chocolate and not about chocolate, it would a waste buying the most expensive cocoa only to then mask it with butter, flour and sugar. I would naturally point out the importance of good quality chocolate but if you have to watch your pennies buy the best you can and supermarket brands make some half decent chocolate for recipes like these.

Whatever it says on the front your interest should be reading the back, when choosing a dark chocolate you should want the first 2 ingredients to be Cocoa Mass and Sugar, in that order and the overall percentage of 70% or more cocoa solids would be ideal, but again if you think you can’t stand plain chocolate start with one containing the minimum 50% cocoa solids which all supermarkets make their own brand in the baking section. For milk chocolate look out for ones containing 30% plus cocoa solids and at least 25% cocoa solids for white chocolate.

I’ve already mentioned in the Chocolate and Pear Tart that sometimes bitterness has very little to do with the percentage of cocoa solids, for me I find Lindt 70% dark chocolate a touch too bitter to eat but happily munch through the Hotel Chocolat’s Ghana 85% chocolate. If the baking section in your supermarket is no use then go to the eating section which I often do, you’ll find decent reasonable chocolate, in Tesco in their finest range Swiss 72% plain chocolate is smooth and finest range Swiss milk chocolate is one my oldest daughter will eat.  Green & Black’s range is everywhere and good.  If you have a Waitrose you’ll find a wider range of different dark cooking chocolate.

Sugar
This recipe asks for one third white caster sugar and two thirds soft brown sugar, I have made this dough with all white sugar and all brown sugar and both are fine but I keep reverting back to this equation, this is just personal taste. I use light brown Muscovado sugar (raw, unrefined sugar) not to be confused with light soft brown sugar, which misses out on the fudgy smell and flavour of unrefined sugar.  Light or Dark Brown sugar is refined white sugar with the flavour that came out of the refining process put back in, which is fine but I don’t see the point in paying for that. Muscovado sugar has a smell and taste that once refined you can’t put back in, even if it’s with its own byproduct.

This Recipe is Child’s Play
Foolproof comes to mind with this recipe or idiot proof and though I wouldn’t put myself in the idiot category I am absent minded enough with distractions to act like an idiot when cooking, hence the confidence I have with the simplicity of this, for example I have forgotten to leave out the butter at room temperature and melted it in the microwave for too long and instead of soften butter I’ve ended with melted butter. The ideal progression of this recipes is starting with creaming the butter and sugar first and adding the flour secondly but just like the photo showing the bowl of the two sugars and butter I was distracted and added the flour too, no matter, just rub it with fingers until butter well mixed in, beat it with wooden spoon enough and it will start to forms lumps ready to add the milk.

I have made this recipe adding all the ingredients at the same time minus the chocolate and it’s turned out no problem.

I have used a hand held whisk or most of the time I used a wooden spoon and my hands and it turns out just like it should.

It’s a very forgiving dough.

Very Important: Cutting The Chocolate
So far I’ve been pretty easy going on how to mix the dough and even the choice of chocolate and the amount of chocolate to add but this is where I’ll tell you it’s worth the effort cutting from a Slab of chocolate and not chocolate chips. If you want to use chocolate chips then you’ll end with an average chocolate chip cookie. And very nice it will be. When you’re cutting a slab of chocolate using your biggest sharpest knife, cuting each indented square into quarters you won’t be able to help but get slivers and shavings of chocolate when doing this, these tiny minuscule chockie bits are so important to this dough. They’ll get blended into the dough making it so delicious inbetween the chunks of chocolate. Chocolate chips will just stay isolated in the bits of dough, not blending in, not making friends with it and the chips will be all uniform size and how dull will that be? Cutting your own chunks you’ll have different sizes making it all the more pleasurable and surprising when biting into the cookie. Note: when cutting the chocolate when it’s cold (winter’s day) it will be quite hard and more brittle making it a bit difficult which is why it’s important to use a large very sharp knife

Oven Temperature
When you make the same thing over and over again regardless how simple it is at times it will turn out different, it’s the case with these cookies and the oven temperature.  I’m giving a temperature and time guide but you’ll have to decide for yourself the texture you want and how your oven works.  If you bake them in a pre-heated medium hot fan assisted oven of 180C /350F / gas 4 for 15 mins, give or take an extra minute or two, when they start to appear light brown at the edges but still pale in the middle you’ll have a cookie with a soft centre.  If you want them without a soft centre then lower the temperature and cook them for longer this will give you a crisp cookie.  When passing on baking recipes I always like to point out ‘know your own oven temperature’ as they are not always exact, my new oven for example took me 2 months to know it well and fan assisted 180C in an average oven, in my oven means it will cook fan assisted 175C, well it’s Italian, what can I say, love it.

Triple Chocolate Cookies

250 g / 9 oz / 2 sticks plus 2 tablespoons Butter at room temperature (if using unsalted add ¼ teaspoon salt)
50 g / 2 oz / 1/3 cup of Caster Sugar
100 g / 4 oz / ½ cup pressed firmly of Light Muscovado Sugar
300 g / 10 oz / 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons Self-Raising Flour
2 – 3 tablespoons / 30 – 45 ml of milk
5 ml / 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

100 g / 4 oz Dark Chocolate chopped into small chunks
100 g / 4 oz White Chocolate chopped into small chunks
100 g / 4 oz Milk Chocolate chopped into small chunks

Pre-heat the oven to 180C / 350 F / gas 4
You’ll need a non-stick baking sheet

– Cream the butter and sugar until well mixed, add vanilla if using.
– Add the flour and mix in, if a little too dry to mix well add the milk 2 tablespoons is normally plenty , mix in well.
– The dough should be damp enough to feel it gives in easily when pressing with your hands but not wet.
– Add the chocolate and mix it in well, best way with your hands.
– Divide the dough into balls, put them on your baking sheets giving them enough room to spread.
– With palm of hand press the dough balls down a little so they’re squashed.
– Bake in pre-heated fan oven for 15 – 20 minutes until edges are pale brown and middle still pale.

Leave them in the baking sheets for 5 minutes before trying to remove them because they’ll be very fragile while very hot.

for smaller size giving 18 cookies weigh 50g / 2 oz each
larger cookies giving you about 12 weigh 85 g / 3 oz each
I normally just divide the dough into 12 equal balls

Cream the sugar and butter until well mixed add flour

Mix flour in and add 2 tablespoons of milk

Mix until the dough comes together, is damp and forms into a ball easily

Chop the chocolate squares into quarters

Don’t forget the little chocolate dust

Add the chopped chocolate and believe it or not the dough will take all that chocolate

And now you have chocolate with a bit of dough attached

Roll them into equal size balls, 12 for large cookies, 18 for smaller cookies

Press them down a bit like patties

This was the last batch I made only yesterday a very gloomy dark day which is why the dough looks a different colour

Bake them you your desired gooeyness or crispness

Even people who you haven’t spoken to for a while will forgive you when you hand a pack of these

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