Chocolate crackle cookies
Because you can never have too many cookie recipes, here’s another one for the collection. I typically think of these as a Christmas sort of cookie, but I’d had the recipe bookmarked for a while and one day when I was craving chocolate (yes, stress baking for me typically results in chocolate) I thought these would be a nice mid-week treat. It produces a nice soft cookie and the better quality chocolate the more intense the flavour. It’s a nice change from your typical chocolate chip or oatmeal raisin cookie!
Chocolate crackle cookies (adapted from use real butter)
8 oz. bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tsps baking powder
1/4 tsp coarse salt (I obviously always use sea salt)
1/2 cup (4 oz.) / about 100 g unsalted butter, room temperature
1 1/2 cups light brown sugar (I always only have dark, which works fine)
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup milk
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup powdered sugar
Melt the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a hot water bath or on medium-low power in a microwave, stirring occasionally. Set aside to let cool. Beat the butter and light brown sugar together for a couple of minutes until fluffy. Beat in the eggs and vanilla, then beat in the melted chocolate. Sprinkle in the salt and baking powder, and then add the cocoa. Mix about half the flour in, followed by half of the milk. Then mix the remaining flour and the remaining milk until combined. Place the dough in the refrigerator for a minimum of 2 hours or until the dough is firm.
Preheat the oven to 180 C / 350 F. Pinch off pieces from the dough and roll into little balls (they will spread so they don’t have to be very big). Coat each dough ball in granulated sugar and then in powdered sugar and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet, leaving space for them to spread. Bake until the surfaces crack – about 14 minutes. I also rotated my baking sheets halfway through the baking time. Remove from baking sheets to cooling racks until completely cooled. You can take them out when they are still a bit soft but just make sure they cool before you move them around a lot as they break apart rather easily when warm (oh well, then you have to sample them). This recipe makes a large amount – about 50-60 cookies, so feel free to halve it.
Ok so to save time I may have added the melted chocolate to the butter and sugar all at the same time and just creamed it all together. What can I say, I’m a huge fan of doing multiple steps at once.
Adding flour to make the dough…
And then adding milk before adding more flour and more milk. It gets a bit sticky but that’s why you put it in the fridge to firm up.
Assembly time! Dough in the back, then in the bowl of granulated sugar on the right, and then the powdered sugar on the left
Ready to go into the oven
And finished product packaged up ready to go
As you can see they spread quite a bit on the cookie sheet
These are a delightful chocolatey cookie that take just a bit of extra effort in the prep process due to the rolling in the sugar, but it produces such an attractive result that it’s more than worth it. They are nice and chewy and the extra little hit of sugar doesn’t hurt either. It’s a nice addition to any cookie basket!
merrifood 