Baked Sunday Mornings: Exceedingly Chocolate Crinkles

I didn't have much interest in the Exceedingly Chocolate Crinkles recipe in Baked Occasions and probably wouldn't have tried it if I wasn't baking along with Baked Sunday Mornings. There are a couple of photos of the cookies in the cookbook and they don't look like anything special -- small, puffy chocolate cookies covered in powdered sugar broken up by distinctive cracks. The recipe headnote describes it as "the most chocolaty cookie I could create that is not just a slab of chocolate."

The cookie is easy to make but the dough needs to be chilled so you need to plan ahead. You beat eggs with sugar and dark brown sugar; add vanilla; mix in a cooled mixture of melted dark chocolate, butter, and espresso powder; and add in all of the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt). The dough was very runny but after I chilled it for 12 hours it was a solid, crumbly mass. It took a lot of effort to scoop it out; I used a #50 scoop and got 31 cookies. I dredged the cookies in powdered sugar before baking.
The cookies developed wide, dramatic cracks during baking. I had applied a very thick coating of powdered sugar before putting the cookies in the oven and it was still caked on thick after baking. I was worried that the cookies were basically powdered sugar booby traps (where you pick up a cookie and somehow end up with powdered sugar all over your shirt and chin), so I tapped each cookie on the baking sheet a few times to shake off some of the excess sugar. As a result, powdered sugar fell into the cracks of the cookies, reducing what had previously been a much starker color contrast between the dark chocolate cookie and the sugar.

I was surprised when I first bit into a cookie to discover that it tasted like a creamy brownie, both in texture and flavor. The texture was unlike any other cookie I've had before. It wasn't cakey at all -- but just fudgy enough to make it smooth without being too heavy. These cookies were exceedingly good.

Recipe: "Exceedingly Chocolate Crinkles" from Baked Occasions by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.

Comments

Louise said…
I make Chocolate Crinkles around the holidays and think I have a great recipe, but I'll have to compare this one.