I have made an awful lot of chocolate chip cookies in my time, especially of late since I want the weekly boxes of baked goods I distribute to friends and colleagues to provide comfort. But honestly, every time I see another chocolate chip cookie recipe, I ask myself if I really need to try it -- because after a while, they all become a blur. However, Samantha Seneviratne's recipe for "The New Chocolate Chip Cookie" from The New Sugar & Spice got my attention. It presented something totally new to me -- a chocolate chip cookie with coconut oil, shredded coconut, and pistachios.
To make the batter, you mix together melted virgin coconut oil, brown sugar, and granulated sugar; stir in vanilla and an egg; add the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, and kosher salt); and incorporate chopped raw pistachios, shredded unsweetened coconut, and bittersweet chocolate. You can bake the cookies right away. I used a #24 scoop to portion out the dough (getting 15 cookies from a batch) and I sprinkled the cookies with flake salt before baking.
My first pan of cookies didn't spread much at all and I didn't like the resulting rotund shape, so I lightly flattened the remaining cookies before putting them in the oven to get a less puffy finished product. The cookbook recommends that the cookies are best eaten warm, so of course I sampled one fresh from the oven. To me, it seemed not so much like a chocolate chip cookie with coconut and pistachios, but more like a coconut-chocolate cookie that happened to have some pistachios tossed in. The coconut was at the forefront, due its distinctive texture and persistent aroma. As Seneviratne says in the recipe headnote, "The heavenly aroma is enough to take your breath away -- and it always makes me feel cared for."
While I liked this cookie a lot -- as I am a member of the coconut-loving camp -- it's not going to displace a more traditional recipe as what I will turn to when I'm looking for the singular satisfaction of a classic chocolate chip cookie. But this cookie was quite memorable, and even just the thought of the coconut fragrance makes me smile.
Recipe: "The New Chocolate Chip Coookie" from The New Sugar & Spice by Samatha Seneviratne.
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