Tuesday, July 1, 2008

Chocolate Overload

There really is nothing better than the smell of  freshly baked chocolate goodies. That's what my kitchen smelled like today. I think that's what heaven must smell like also...at least I hope so.
Since I had double the occasion to bake today (Amy's birthday and my mom having some friends over) I decided to make cookies AND brownies. I spent the morning browsing recipes and came up with:


1) Double Chocolate Cookies (from Treasury of Home Baking). These were really, really good. All my friends loved them. It was a little time consuming, and they turned out super thin and sort of stuck to the baking sheet. After they were done cooking, the recipe said to dip half in melted chocolate, but the cookies were too fragile so I ended up just drizzling chocolate on top, which worked perfectly. They did take a really long time to set-up, and since they were so thin they sort of fell apart on me. The taste, however, was great. 



The cookies took a while to make because the dough had to set for half an hour in the fridge so I made the dough, put it in the fridge and while that was chilling I made the brownies. The timing worked out really well.

2) Chunky Chocolate Brownies. I used toasted hazelnuts. I wish I hadn't. I'm actually not a huge fan of hazelnuts (I think they have sort of a funny aftertaste) and these would have been better with walnuts---or nothing at all. The texture was great, they were really fudgy and good, and next time I make them I think I'll omit the nuts entirely. They're really rich and chocolate-y and though the recipe says it makes 9, I got 16 decently sized brownies out of them.


So today was filled with way too much chocolate (including a few too many m&m nibbles, and a slight devouring of some chocolate-raspberry birthday cake) so tomorrow will for sure be a "back on the healthy boat" day of eating. No new recipes unfortunately though because nobody is going to be home for dinner at the same time and there are still leftovers in the fridge.

These treats were definitely a great indulgence--especially those chocolate cookies!

1 comment:

Aliza said...

Oh my gosh, those look SO amazing. I am completely deprived of chocolate here in Thailand, and its totally killing me. I've had ice cream, but nothing can replace a gooey, chocolately, melty brownie.