The cookie man cometh

Getting out of class this early is a rare treat for my class. Feeling in a somewhat celebratory mood, my mind stretched for things to cook, but only one thing kept coming up repeatedly. Cookies. But what kind? Not the usual "Oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip. or sugar" dilema. I was thinking more along the lines of texture. There's crunchy, puffy, cake-like, chewey, crumbly, tender; the list goes on.

I could think of only one expert to consult on this matter. A quick google search found me the undisputed master of cookiedom on earth. What's that you say?
Julia Child? Noooo. Alton Brown? Guess again. That's right, my expert was none other than that boggle eyed, big blue walking shag carpet, Sesame Street's own Mr. Cookie Monster. In a stroke of genius pulled straight from Snow White, I consulted the image of his blueness on my screen and chanted to my computer;

"LCD screen on my desk, which yummy cookie should I make next?"

The image of cookie monster just sat there on my screen, motionless. And that's it... nothing else. Oh well, it works in the cartoons. Wondering a bit about my sanity, I banished the visage of cookie monster back to the realm of cyberspace. I needed something to listen to while I started cooking. Looking through my library, I settled on Star Wars. It's got everything I need. Luke and Darth and Leia, Obi-wan, and who could forget Han solo and... Chewbacca...or was it Chewie? Chewey?...no.. CHEWY!! I had my answer for my cookie selection dilema. Chewy-chocolate-chip it would be.

I wish I could tell you I had some amazingly secret chocolate-chip recipe, but I don't. Like pretty much every cook in America, my basic cookie formulation is based on the Constitution of Cookiedom, the "Tollhouse" recipe. But I do know enough about baking now to do a little tinkering.

It's really amazing what a little bit of ingredient-play can do in the world of baking. I went with bread flour for machines for the high protein content. I chose the darkest brown sugar I could find for the molasses, and I refrigerated the dough for a solid 3 hours before I even looked at the oven. It all gets pretty technical and food science-ish for a blog like this, so I'll spare you the long explanation. But for what must be the best "how to cookie" tutorial I've ever seen, lookup the "Good Eats" with Alton Brown episode "Three Chips for Sister Marsha. It's really fascinating science!

Enough with the technical stuff. Not being too much of a fan of semi-sweet chocolate chips, I went with milk-chocolate. For the dark chocolatey-ness, I had plans of my own for this batch of goodness.

Some parchment paper, a #50 disher, a baking sheet, and 15 minutes in a 375 degree oven yielded me some very nice cookies. However I wasn't done yet. I needed the "dark side" of chocolate to come through. For this, I turned to the life-blood basis of all chocolateering, ganache. The internet says there are 3,150,000 recipes for ganache in cyberspace. Looking through several of them, I became a bit irritated because for all the neat variations I came across (ranging from plain, to low-fat, raspberry, hazelnut, and the list goes on for volumes), ganache is really just two ingredients. Cream and chocolate.

Having never made it before, I decided on a fairly common ratio it seems of 12 oz chocolate (I went with 2 parts dark and 1 part milk chocolate), to one cup of heavy cream. I added a splash of vanilla extract just to deepen the flavor a little. I also added the barest, tiniest pinch of Cayenne powder, just for a little extra kick in helping the chocolate stay locked on those taste buds. I know, hot pepper and chocolate is insane to do, but if you do it right, people will not feel any heat at all, they'll just know that "something" is in there. Beyond that, there's not much to it really, though it is fun to watch a saucepan with cream and chocolate turn from an incompatible "mass of ugly", into a silken-smooth curtain of chocolate essence. Not much of a recipe, but I think I love this variation. And since everyone else on the internet has a recipe for Ganache, now I do too! Wow, this whole thing is getting long-winded tonight. On to the results and then a nap is in order!

Using a very, VERY well-rinsed plastic mustard-squirter container, I piped on some hot ganache onto my newly born cookies. A healthy dollop of some Ice-cream finished out my dessert-for-dinner plate and led me do taste-bud nirvana. Warm cookies pressed against ice-cream, mingled with the still-hot ganache creates a galactic empire of flavor in your mouth that just cannot be described with justice in a humble food blog. But I will say that adding the hot Ganache straight to the cookies before serving them made for one cookie dessert that was truly "Out of this world". Somehow, I think that both Chewbacca and The Cookie Monster would approve. Can't wait for tomorrow and another day in the kitchen.

463 to go!