In this edition of Epicurious 101, professional chef and chef instructor Frank Proto demonstrates how to level up your biscuit game with his favorite chocolate cookie recipe.Get our favorite recipe: Simple Chocolate Cookies
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 I'm Frank Proto, professional chef and culinary instructor.
00:02 And today I'm going to show you how to make my favorite
00:04 holiday cookie, a Dutch cocoa cookie.
00:07 We're talking chewy center, crispy edges,
00:10 chocolatey goodness in one little cookie.
00:13 This is holiday cookies 101.
00:16 There's a lot of reasons why I love this cookie.
00:19 They're easy to make.
00:20 They taste great.
00:21 They last for a long time.
00:22 So they're great for gifting.
00:23 If you want to gift for the holidays,
00:25 I like to get them as a gift.
00:26 Please make these cookies and send them to me.
00:29 Lots of them.
00:30 All this talk about sweets is making me hungry.
00:32 Let's bake some cookies.
00:34 First thing we want to do is put our butter
00:40 and our sugar in the mixer.
00:42 Put the mixer down, make sure it's locked.
00:44 Do not turn the mixer on full blast right now.
00:47 We want to start low and then go high
00:49 so that we can really whip our butter up
00:51 and get some air into it
00:52 and break those sugar crystals down.
00:54 We want to mix it until it's nice and creamy.
00:56 This is going to kind of start to melt the sugar
00:59 and it's going to give our finished cookie
01:00 a really nice texture.
01:02 Take a second here to scrape your sides down
01:04 and your bottom down,
01:05 just in case there's butter or sugar
01:07 that is not incorporated.
01:09 And then we go for a little longer.
01:11 Once you start seeing it lighter and fluffier,
01:13 again, you scrape down the sides one more time.
01:15 So I have a measuring cup here.
01:17 I have my eggs and vanilla.
01:19 If I crack here and I get shell in there,
01:22 it's going to be really hard to take out.
01:23 So get yourself a bowl or a measuring cup.
01:26 The eggs in this are basically the cement of the cookie.
01:28 When we bake the cookie, it goes from liquid to solid.
01:31 It gives us some chewiness, some fat, some flavor,
01:34 and it holds the cookie together.
01:36 Vanilla in with the eggs.
01:38 So we turn the sugar back on.
01:40 If we add all the eggs at once,
01:41 it gets really sloshy and messy.
01:43 So one at a time, one egg and vanilla.
01:48 Once the egg is incorporated, I can add the other egg.
01:51 And you can see it's coming together.
01:52 It's getting nice and creamy.
01:53 I stop it and I scrape my sides down again
01:55 because there's some butter and sugar
01:57 that's stuck to the side.
01:58 The eggs aren't mixed in with.
01:59 It's really crucial that we scrape the sides down.
02:02 I don't want to have a pocket of butter
02:04 or a pocket of sugar that hasn't been blended well.
02:07 You need to mix this really well.
02:08 Now that our wet ingredients are mixed together,
02:10 I can start with the dry.
02:11 All-purpose flour.
02:12 Cake flour won't give you enough structure.
02:14 Bread flour might give you a little too much structure
02:17 and have your cookie be a little tough.
02:18 All-purpose is the happy medium.
02:20 Baking soda is our leavener.
02:22 Without the leavener, they'd be flat disks
02:24 and really wouldn't have a lot of texture to them.
02:26 Salt. Salt is a flavor enhancer.
02:28 It's gonna accentuate the butter, the sugar,
02:30 the vanilla, and the cocoa flavors.
02:32 And then our cocoa powder.
02:34 I'm using a Dutch process cocoa powder.
02:36 Dutch process cocoa powder is regular cocoa powder
02:38 that has been treated with an alkali or alkaline
02:41 to make it a little more smoother,
02:43 a little more rounder, a little bit darker,
02:45 a slightly muted kind of cocoa flavor.
02:48 And that's what I want in my recipe.
02:50 Get a whisk.
02:51 Just whisk it together.
02:52 Make sure you mix it really well
02:54 so everything's incorporated.
02:55 If there's any lumps, just break them up with your whisk.
02:57 When ingredients are done, dry ingredients are done.
02:59 This cookie recipe is not fussy.
03:01 It's easy and simple,
03:02 and you basically just get to dump everything in.
03:04 Do not turn this on all the way.
03:06 So what I like to do is just pulse the switch
03:09 until it gets incorporated.
03:11 Otherwise, you're gonna get a big cloud
03:12 of flour and cocoa in your face.
03:14 I'm gonna stop.
03:15 I'm gonna scrape down my sides once again.
03:17 People worry about overmixing,
03:19 and there's so much butter and sugar
03:21 and like egg in this cookie.
03:23 It's really hard to overmix, right?
03:25 It's just like I said, it's not fussy,
03:27 and it's really simple and basic.
03:28 Scrape your sides down and mix.
03:31 And that's it.
03:33 My dough is done.
03:34 I know my dough is done
03:35 because if you take it off of the machine,
03:37 there's no dry flour on the bottom.
03:40 It's really mixed well,
03:41 and there's no like spots of butter or sugar.
03:44 Everything is nice and chocolatey brown.
03:46 So we get in there, get everything off of your paddle.
03:51 This cookie dough has a really nice, dark, rich color.
03:54 You can smell the chocolate now,
03:57 and it's gonna be even better once we put it in the oven.
03:59 You see how quick and easy that was?
04:01 We just put together a few simple ingredients.
04:03 Now we get to put them on a sheet tray and bake them.
04:05 One final touch for these Dutch cocoa cookies
04:10 is that we're gonna roll them in sugar.
04:12 I have a disher or an ice cream scoop
04:14 that some people call it.
04:15 This is a one and a half tablespoons.
04:17 I like my cookies a little on the large side.
04:20 And what this does for us
04:21 is it gives us a uniform size of cookie.
04:23 You can use a table spoon measure, that's great,
04:25 but your cookies are gonna be all different sizes.
04:27 So I go into the bowl, I pack it in there,
04:30 and I scrape it on the side.
04:32 So I have a nice uniform cookie every single time.
04:36 So you take the dough, drop it into your sugar.
04:38 Not only is dipping in the sugar
04:40 gonna make it taste great,
04:41 it also gives it a little more crunch on the outside.
04:44 And I like that.
04:45 It looks good, it tastes good, and that's what I want.
04:47 So roll them in the sugar.
04:49 I'm gonna do three across.
04:51 Space them out properly so they don't run into each other.
04:54 And we'll do four down, so 12 cookies per tray.
04:57 Another thing I love about this recipe
04:59 is you do not need to refrigerate this.
05:01 Yes, you can scoop them and freeze them.
05:03 If you're gonna do that, don't dip them in the sugar
05:06 until right before you put them in the oven.
05:08 Scoop them plain, let them freeze,
05:10 put them in a Ziploc bag,
05:12 and then put them in the sugar right before you bake.
05:14 But the fringe benefit of these
05:16 is you can make the dough,
05:17 scoop it, and bake it in the same day.
05:20 These cookies are looking great already.
05:21 It's time to get them in the oven.
05:23 I'm gonna put them in at 350 for about 10 to 12 minutes.
05:26 The cookies have come out of the oven
05:30 and they've cooled completely.
05:31 We want them to cool down all the way.
05:33 Let's give one a taste.
05:35 And you can see the texture is nice and fudgy on the inside.
05:38 The edge is a little crispy.
05:40 This is an amazing cookie.
05:43 It's got a little bit of everything.
05:45 It's chewy, it's crunchy, it's chocolatey, it's rich.
05:48 These Dutch Cocoa cookies are my favorite,
05:50 and I love to give them as gifts around the holidays.
05:53 You give these cookies as a gift,
05:54 you have a friend for life.
05:56 (door slams)
05:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]