chocolate chip

Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies with Raisins and Pecans

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A dear friend gave me her copy of “Deceptively Delicious” , the cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld, when I complained about my kids not eating certain foods.  Vegetables being our main problem.  While perusing the cookbook I came across some really yummy looking recipes.  The great thing is that almost every one sneaks veggies into foods that kids love (macaroni and cheese, spaghetti and meatballs, chicken nugget, etc .)  I came across a chocolate chip cookie recipe that has an entire can of chickpeas in it.  Well, we all know what I had to do that very day.

Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies | Hottie Biscotti

I changed a few things about the recipe, using butter instead of tub margarine, one egg and one egg white instead of two egg whites, and white whole wheat flour instead of all purpose.  I also mashed up the chickpeas instead of adding them whole, just to avoid biting into a big ol’ chickpea, which didn’t sound super appealing.

The results were not bad!  You can’t taste the chickpeas.  Ben actually took one off of the cooling rack when he got home, ate it and declared it good before I told him they were semi-healthy.  I didn’t even tell him about the chickpeas.  He’s finding out now via the blog…

Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies | Hottie Biscotti

The cookies are cakey and bake up in mounds with very little spreading.  I left some in mounds and flattened others.  You can flatten them with your hand, the bottom of a glass or the back of a fork.  Eaten the same day they’re baked they are really tasty.  After storing them in a container for a day they stick together a bit and are very soft.  BUT still quite delicious.

Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies | Hottie Biscotti

I used milk chocolate chips, but I think semi sweet or dark would be better.  The raisins are optional, but I really liked them in these cookies.  I used pecans, because that’s what I had.  But, and I know this is out of character, I think walnuts would be better.  I don’t think the white whole wheat flour made much of a difference in these since they’re already very hearty in texture, I used it because I had some and it made me feel like I was making these even healthier!  Healthier cookies means I can eat more of them!  And I feel better about giving them to the kids.  Both of the big kids, almost 4 and almost 2, really liked these.  So while I won’t be making these cookies every time I want chocolate chip cookies, I will be making these again.

Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies | Hottie Biscotti

Chocolate Chip Chickpea Cookies

From Deceptively Delicious

Makes 2 dozen

Ingredients

  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 3/4 cup (1 and 1/2 sticks) butter, softened
  • 1 egg and 1 egg white
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla
  • 2 cups flour (all purpose or white whole wheat)
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  • 1 15-ounce can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
  • 1 1/2 cups chocolate chips
  • heaping 1/2 cup pecans
  • heaping 1/2 cup raisins
  • 1/2 cup oats

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350°F.
  2. Place chickpeas in a bowl and mash with a potato masher or a fork, until mixture is coarse, just a few larger pieces, but not perfectly smooth.
  3. Beat butter and brown sugar in a large bowl of a stand mixer, or with a hand mixer.  Beat for 2  minutes, then scrape the bowl.
  4. Add in egg and egg white and beat well, then ass in vanilla and scrape bowl.
  5. Mix in flour, baking powder and salt until just combined.  Then mix in oats.
  6. Mix in chickpeas, chocolate chips, pecans and raisins until evenly mixed.
  7. Scoop by rounded tablespoons onto a cookie sheet lined with parchment.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, until tops are beginning to brown.  Let cool on the pan for a minutes, then move to a wire rack.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

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This is Jacques Torres’s secret recipe!  I found it on Martha Stewart, so it’s really no big secret.  In the summer of 2010 I went to visit my sister and her family in Brooklyn.  We stopped by the Jacques Torres shop in Dumbo and we got one of these cookies.  I think these have got to be among the best chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever had.  The chocolate is in these thin layers thanks to chocolate pastilles, not chocolate chips.  You can find these online, at some grocery stores and baking shops.  This makes a huge difference. You get lots of chocolate in every single bite and it is melty, gooey and wonderful.  Pastilles are those big flat chocolate disks.  You’ve probably seen them.  They look like this.

Now, I will not claim to have duplicated the magic of Mr. Chocolate in my kitchen, but I did turn out some tasty cookies.  They would have been tastier if I’d gotten the chocolate I was supposed to get and hadn’t been distracted at HEB by Fabio.  That’s right.  Fabio from Top Chef, and me, and Carson.  We took a picture together.

I was almost done with my grocery list.  All I needed were a few more produce items and 1 pound block of the best chocolate HEB had to offer.  Then I found out Fabio was doing a cooking demo and in my haste to get everything I needed in time for Fabio, I forgot about it.  About 5 minutes after he started cooking Carson started getting pretty grumpy, so we had to check out and head home.  I had to go out later (in the pouring down rain, without an umbrella) to the store closer to us that didn’t have a great selection.  I wound up with some 60% cocoa chocolate bars, one bag of semi sweet and one of milk chocolate chips.

The recipe below is the full batch.  I made a half batch of the smaller sized cookies and wound up with somewhere around 50 larger than average size cookies.  I can’t imagine any occasion where you might possibly need to make a full batch, maybe a bake sale or if you’re making Christmas cookie plates for the neighborhood.  The half batch made a ton of cookies.

The recipe calls for pastry flour, but I used cake flour.  For the chocolate I used 8 ounces of chopped 60% cocoa chocolate, 4 ounces of semi sweet chips and 4 ounces of milk chocolate chips.  I let the dough sit overnight in the fridge.  I’ve heard that this lets the flour soak up more moisture and then there’s some scientific mumbo jumbo about letting the gluten strands relax which is said to create better texture.  Either way, these have wonderful chew, a terrific flavor and are dangerously addictive.  Be very careful if you make these and make sure to give lots of them away!

Jacques Torrres’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 pound unsalted butter
  • 1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
  • 2 1/4 cups packed light-brown sugar
  • 4 large eggs
  • 3 cups plus 2 tablespoons pastry flour
  • 3 cups bread flour
  • 1 tablespoon salt
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 2 teaspoons baking soda
  • 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
  • 2 pounds Jacques Torres House (60 percent cocoa) Chocolate or other best-quality semisweet or bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped

Directions

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or nonstick baking mats; set aside.
  2. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugars. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Reduce speed to low and add both flours, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla, and chocolate; mix until well combined.
  3. Using a 4-ounce scoop for larger cookies or a 1-ounce scoop for smaller cookies, scoop cookie dough onto prepared baking sheets, about 2 inches apart. Bake until lightly browned, but still soft, about 20 minutes for larger cookies and about 15 minutes for smaller cookies. Cool slightly on baking sheets before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cake

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On any given day there are dozens of recipes that come into my Google Reader from the food blogs I follow.  It would be impossible for me to read all these posts, and even more impossible for me to try to make even half of them.  If something catches my eye, I’ll open it in another window and let in linger there for a few days, read through it a couple times, and figure out when (or if) I will have the time to make it.  This particular recipe was something I knew I had to make, I just had to find the time to get a few things at the store and a big enough chunk of nap time from Carson to get it done.

Bake or Break posted this recipe which is from a cookbook from Baked in Brooklyn.  I visited Baked last summer when I went to see my sister and her family.  I highly recommend making the effort to go there if you find yourself in New York City.   Here is the link to Bake or Break, and here is the link to the cookbook…which I am seriously considering purchasing.

Due to a lack of time, resources, and the memory to get cream cheese at the grocery store, I did not make the cream cheese frosting.  I instead opted to make a simple glaze of milk, powdered sugar and a little almond extract.  I glazed the cake in the pan after it had cooled.  The glaze is nice on this cake, but I am a huge fan of cream cheese frosting and will probably make this again to see how the two variations compare.

The method of soaking the oats in boiling water and melting the butter with that mixture was something I hadn’t seen or done before.  I think it gave the cake a moister and more delicate texture than if those ingredients were combined separately.  Mixing the chocolate chips with liquor (I used Courviosier…don’t ask me why I have a bottle of that) and then tossing in the flour was supposed to keep them from sinking to the bottom, but most of mine did sunk anyway.  Not a big deal.

I really like this cake.  It’s dense, moist, and has great contrasts in texture with the oats, chocolate chips and glaze.  Skipping the glaze and serving this warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce would be crazy delicious.  Why do I get these great ideas after I make something? (more…)