Recipes for Readers from Molly MacRae: Double Dark Chocolate Devastators

 

 

Here's a recipe to help you through adversities of all kinds. But beware. These cookies might easily kill someone. Anyone who can’t tell the difference between eating something delicious and dying and going to heaven should avoid them.

Yield: 30 – 60 cookies, depending how big you make them

Ingredients

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ cup cocoa powder

2 teaspoons baking powder

¾ teaspoon salt

4 large eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 teaspoons instant coffee

10 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

1 ½ cups packed dark brown sugar

½ cup granulated sugar

16 ounces bittersweet chocolate, melted

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

 

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 F. Whisk flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt together in large bowl. In separate bowl whisk eggs, vanilla and instant coffee together until coffee is dissolved.

Beat butter and sugars together in large bowl until light and fluffy, 3-6 minutes.

Stir in egg mixture. Beat in melted chocolate, scraping sides of bowl as necessary. 

Stir in flour mixture until combined. Stir in chips.

Scoop dough into balls, 1-3 inches in diameter, and place on parchment-lined baking sheet, spaced about 1 ½ - 2 inches apart. Bake until edges are set and tops are cracked but centers are still soft and underdone, 10-12 minutes. 

Let cookies stand on baking sheet for 10 minutes, transfer to wire rack.

Store in an airtight container. After a day or two, if there are still cookies left, recreate the fresh-from-the-oven experience of melty chocolate chips by nuking one of these devils for about 10 seconds in the microwave. 

Pair these cookies with the Dirk Gently series by Douglas Adams. Book 1 – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and Book 2 – The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul. Sadly, Adams died before finishing Book 3 – The Salmon of Doubt. The unfinished manuscript is included in a posthumous collection – The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. 

If you’re familiar with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Adams (a trilogy consisting of six books), you’ll recognize his humor and wildly inventive imagination in these off-beat detective novels. You might also catch hints of P.G. Wodehouse. I like fun titles, and like all of his, but I especially like The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Protagonists in mysteries often face a “dark night of the soul” moment where all is lost, before triumphing and solving the crime.

If you’re ever in crisis, reach for a double-dark chocolate devastator. It might not give you the strength you need to carry on, but it’ll be delicious, and what more can you ask from a cookie?