No Flax Please

We’re pretty careful about what we eat at home. We never buy prepared food, we rarely order in and when we eat out, it’s at local restaurants that we know serve fresh local food (that’s you Urban Pantry and Passionate Cooks Essentials!). We like sweets though. Cookies, especially. I don’t make them that often because, well, I’ll eat them. My go to cookie is an oatmeal one with everything in it; ground flax seed, wheatgerm, whole wheat flour, fruit, chocolate chunks, nuts or seeds and very little sugar. There is no recipe, it varies depending on what’s in the kitchen.

But when I announced I was going to make cookies on Sunday night, my daughter Liv grimaced at the thought of my go to recipe. She announced she would love a “chocolatey chocolate” cookie, no flax!  

Hmm, just how chocolatey could I make a cookie?  Little bit of research and I dug up with this recipe: Chocolate Chubbies. It promised to be a gooey, brownie like cookie with a hard shell and a soft center. A chocolate dough filled with two kinds of nuts and MORE chocolate.

It’s an extravagant recipe, in that it uses 12 oz of chocolate in the dough. I made it more so but on;y using the Kilombero 72%, instead of some unsweetened and some 62% as per the recipe. I do recommend using a good chocolate, as it is, without a doubt, the dominant ingredient.

I reduced the sugar by a litte more than ¼ of a cup and the cookie still met the "chocolately chocolate" in-house standards. We generally like our sweets not too sweet. 

I didn't add the pecans, none in the pantry, and added 1 cup of 72% Dominicana chocolate chunks (instead of chips).

One tip that really makes this cookie work; watch the cooking time carefully. I took about 5 minutes off the cooking time in the recipe. I waited until the edges of the cookie looked firm and slightly shiny and the center still looked somewhat soft. That left the cookie firm around the edges and cooked but soft in the middle even when cool. Hard to give an exact time as I expect everyone’s ovens will cook differently. Just watch the cookie.

This cookie has the self contained, hold in your hand nature of a cookie but with a center that acts like a molten chocolate cake. So, so good! So, next time you are fed up with flax.....