A Cookie For the Road

This morning I met several law school classmates for lunch at Four Sisters Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church (if you haven't already tried it, I highly recommend #57 on the menu, the grilled pork northern style with rice vermicelli ). I wanted to bring along some cookies to send home with everyone, so I decided to make Giant Chocolate-toffee Cookies, a Bon Appetit recipe that is also featured in The Bon Appetit Cookbook. This is a particularly good cookie to take on the road. I know through experience that its sturdy structure and chewy texture stand up to plane travel and the U.S. Postal Service. One of my classmates at lunch is only in town for 24 hours and flies back home to Hong Kong tomorrow morning. I wanted to make sure that I supplied him with baked goods that could survive the trip.


This cookie recipe has the yummy ratio of one pound of chocolate and one bag of Heath Bar Bits (which I use instead of chopped Heath Bars, just because it's easier) to only one-half cup of flour. The cookie is one of the chewiest I have ever come across and keeps for at least five days (actually, it might be longer, but I've never had a batch that wasn't eaten before I could find out). It also bakes up with a beautiful cracked appearance. The only downside to taking these treats on the road is that their lovely appearance and intense chocolate aroma have the potential to attract a little too much attention... Last month I carried some to my aunt and uncle in Columbus, and when I decided to snack on one during the beverage service on the flight, I ended up ceding a few to the stewardess and pilots as well.

The recipe claims to yield 18 cookies, each made with 1/4 cup of dough. I have never tried making the cookies in those proportions, and I am too scared to ever try. I usually use a #24 scoop (while is roughly 2 and 2/3 tablespoons, or significantly less than the four tablespoons in a quarter cup), and I get 30 cookies, over 3.5 inches in diameter. That's giant enough for me!

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