Salted Chocolate Cookies: Holiday Edition

Ok, so this is my first Cooking Challenge posting.  Forgive me if I screw up. I got this recipe from my stepmom, who makes all sorts of awesome cookies.

These cookies hold no special holiday connection for me save the fact that I love them so much I could quite possibly punch Santa in the face for a plate of them.  The batch I make is a double recipe because a single batch makes about 36 cookies or so...which is never enough.  Ever.

So, first it's time for the "not at all bad for you" ingredient list.  Remember, this is the double batch ingredient list.

12 oz semisweet chocolate
12 T unsalted butter
3 C flour
1 C cocoa
4 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
8 eggs
3 C sugar
2 t vanilla
1 C powdered sugar
dark chocolate kisses
coarse salt

Awesomeness comes at a price.  The price of these cookies (aside from the size of your butt) is that this is a two day process.  I've tried making them in one day, and it really just doesn't work.

Day One (about 20 minutes)

A ridiculous amount of butter

Begin by melting the butter in a double boiler--or if you're cheap like me, a bowl in a pan.  Add the semisweet chocolate.  I like the chips because they melt faster.

mmmmm melty chocolate goodness

Beat the eggs, sugar, and vanilla on medium high for 1 minute.

Ainsley was helping me...mostly by bossing me around and saying "I want that."  She is asserting her tiny Napoleon-like demands above.

Whisk together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.  Be sure to lift the whisk out of the dry ingredients and spray the dry ingredients all over your jammies.

Trippy

Pour the chocolate/butter into the egg/sugar/vanilla mixture.  Curse that there are 3 bowls in this recipe and you can't just say wet or dry ingredients.  Be sure to take some time to marvel at the pretty swirly patterns that happen when you mix in the chocolate.  Pointing and saying, "ooh pretty" is appropriate.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients.  If your hand mixer is as old as your first college apartment, it will whine and possibly smoke.  This does not affect the quality of the cookie's taste.

Refrigerate the giant bowl of goodness overnight

Day Two (about an hour or two--depending on how many cookies you cook at once)

In an effort to make these cookies more holiday-esque, I ran to Country Kitchen to buy some green and red petal dust to tint the powdered sugar.  If you're ever in Fort Wayne, you must come to Country Kitchen.  It's like crack.

 My recipe says to roll 1 T of the batter into 1" balls.  I deem those cookies ridiculously too small and just eyeball it.  Roll the balls (heh) in the tinted powdered sugar.  Put them on parchment paper on cookie sheets.

Prebaking

Post baking

Bake the cookies for 10 minutes at 350 degrees.

Place kisses in the center of each cookie.  Then return the cookies to the oven for 5-15 seconds.  The kisses should look shiny but not melty.  This is a pain in the butt to get right.  I've learned that if you do them too long or not long enough, the salt doesn't stick.  I'm sure someone with more culinary chops could get this right faster than I did.

Sprinkle the cookies generously with salt.  I like to use kosher salt because it's larger.  I'm also superfly impatient, so after I've sprinkled the cookies with salt, I put them on a plate in the freezer to reset the kisses.  If you don't, they'll be soft and squishy for a while.  Then when you're clumsy, you'll bump them and squish the kisses.  This is acceptable if your want your salted crinkle cookies to look like boobs with strange, pointy nipples.  However, that may not be appropriate for your cookie clientele.

 So, this is the first time I tried to gussy these cookies up with color and non-salt sprinkles.  It worked and they were very festive.  I found they appeared more festive when they are placed on a Santa platter and held next to a Christmas tree.

I also geeked out at the petal dust implications of this recipe--pastels for Easter parties; red, white, and blue for 4th of July; orange and black for Halloween.  The possibilities are endless.  ENDLESS I tell you!

Adrienne called me names for making the cookies.

Be sure to take the cookies to a gathering.  Then  marvel as your friends and family enjoy the cookies, then hoard them from one another, then yell at you for their being so good that they ate 10 of them.

Note the look of deliciousness on Aunt Sarah's face.  Xander isn't old enough to love the cookies.  More for us!