These were chocolate crinkle cookies.
When I saw a recipe for these cookies on Cook's Illustrated magazine, I knew I would make them. Here they are. What I liked about the recipe was no need of creaming butter, bringing eggs to room temperature, or chilling dough that many cookie recipes go through, which means these cookies can be ready to eat in a short time whenever I (or J) want them. First of all, I had never baked crinkle cookies. Even I don't remember if I have had one. The recipe promised cookies that should be moist and tender, not gooey, with serious chocolate flavor and modest sweetness and have beautiful crinkles through a bright white surface. Who couldn't be trapped in the description? Obviously I was.
A big question was which type of cocoa powder I should use. According to the Cook's Illustrated, natural cocoa powder will bring to the cookies "straightforward chocolate flavor with some acidity, light color, drier crumb and less spread;" Dutch-processed will "fruity, bitter chocolate flavor with dark color and moister, fudgier crumb." I had both types in hand. The latter sounded somehow close to what I would like this time. So I used my good quality brand of Dutch-processed cocoa powder. I halved the recipe. 22 cookies sounded too many for two of us. I was supposed to make 11. Somehow they became 10. According to J, even number is better for us to share. That's right!
Tada! Beautiful! However, I didn't see "plenty of small irregular crinkly fissures" on any of them that the recipe was supposed to make. I thought I had followed the recipe closely. Wait, I reduced the amount of brown sugar as usual. Was it the reason? Anyway, the number of crinkles were not a big deal at all. The cookies were WOW! Moist, light, cakey lovely texture, melting in your mouth. Truly chocolatey. Less sweet, for sure.
Perfect holiday cookies. Even for everyday!
