Need to warm up? These chewy Dark Chocolate Chipotle Cookies will certainly help. The wonderful dark chocolate taste comes through first, followed closely by the kick of the chipotle. Such a great flavor combination!

The recipe originally comes from Nantucket Cookie Company via the Food Network and it is the January Cookie Carnival recipe. I halved the quanity mainly because I just couldn’t bring myself to use 4 sticks of butter. I tried, I just couldn’t do it. In the end, my hips thank me, I’m sure of it.

The recipe calls for crushed dried chipotle peppers but my grocery store was out (and has been for a while) so I substituted with ground chipotle powder. Being cautious because I didn’t want to make them too spicy, I started with 1/8 tsp and worked up from there, according to taste. The final amount I used was somewhere between 1/2 tsp and 1 tsp. Really accurate, I know. After tasting the cookies, I do think I could have added even more. The taste was very subtle but it added a lot to the overall flavor of the cookies. I plan on trying these again when my grocery store gets the crushed dried peppers in stock.

I recommend trying these warm, right out of the oven, with a glass of milk or some hot chocolate!!

Dark Chocolate Chipotle Cookies
adapted from Food Network (Courtesy of Nantucket Cookie Company)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cut into 1-inch cubes, softened
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3/4 cup sugar, plus 1/4 for topping
1/4 cup cocoa powder sifted
1 teaspoon crushed, dried chipotle peppers (or Ground Chipotle Chili powder)
2 eggs
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 teaspoons water
4 oz (0.25 lb) high-quality bittersweet chocolate, melted and cooled slightly
3/4 cup high-quality bittersweet chocolate chips, plus 1/4 cup for topping

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix together the flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl; set aside.

With an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat butter until smooth, scraping sides of the bowl as necessary. Add the sugars, sifted cocoa powder and chipotle peppers and mix at medium speed until light and fluffy (about 1 minute). Add eggs, vanilla and water. Beat at medium speed until combined, about 30 seconds. Add the slightly cooled melted chocolate and mix again, scraping the bowl to evenly mix everything.

Add the flour mixture, and mix until well incorporated. Add the chocolate chips and mix briefly (about 5 seconds).

Refrigerate the dough in the bowl until cool and fudge-like, but not solid, for approximately 1 hour. You can use an ice cream scoop to create large, even sized cookies. These cookie-dough balls can also be frozen at this point, and baked right from the freezer whenever the need arises.

When ready to bake, press the tops of the cookie dough-balls into the sugar, and then top with 2 to 3 pieces of dark chocolate chips. Place onto parchment-lined baking sheets, allowing space for the cookies to spread (Note: I did about 4-6 cookies per sheet because they spread out quite a bit). Bake for 12 to 14 minutes. Remove the cookies from the oven when they are still a little underdone. Slide the parchment paper with the cookies onto a cooling rack and allow to cool before removing from parchment.

Made about 2 dozen large cookies.

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© Stormie for BiteSizeBaker.com, 2010. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Chipotle, chocolate, cookie carnival, Cookies & Bars

This months Cookie Carnival recipe is Chocolate Citrus Biscotti (flavored with orange and lemon zest) from Giada De Laurentiis via the Food Network.

I love anything citrus. I can eat all the navel oranges you can put in front of me. In my opinion, Florida grows the best oranges. Of course, I may be a bit biased as I grew up in the middle of a county that is home to approximately 95,050 acres of commercial orange groves. In case you were wondering, that’s a ton of oranges!

Back to the biscotti… This is a recipe I plan on baking again and again. It was absolutely wonderful. I loved the cornmeal texture. It’s something I hadn’t tried before with biscotti. It got even better when dipped in hot coffee. Y-u-m-m-y.

I had my doubts that it would be citrus-y enough for my liking, but I was pleasantly surprised with the flavor. It was just right and they smelled absolutely wonderful as they baked!

A couple of notes:

I found the dough to be really soft when trying to form it into logs. It kept wanting to spread outward. In the end, I had more of a large rectangle rather than a well formed log. It still worked though, they were just a little wider than originally intended.

The recipe says it makes 3 dozen. Somehow, I only came out with about 1 dozen. Probably due to the aforementioned widening of the logs.

On the last round of baking I cut the baking time to 20 minutes instead of 25.

Also, there are a few reviews on Food Network’s site saying the biscotti was extremely hard. I didn’t find it to be that hard. Yes, it was a bit harder than some biscotti I have baked but it wasn’t break-your-teeth hard.

For an extra touch, I chopped some walnuts and sprinkled them on the chocolate before it set.

They are even delicious for breakfast. Not that I had any for breakfast. This is just hypothetically speaking of course….sort of….

Get the recipe: Chocolate Citrus Biscotti

Also, if you haven’t already, check out the Cookie Carnival!

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© Stormie for BiteSizeBaker.com, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Biscotti, chocolate, citrus, cookie carnival, Cookies & Bars, lemon, orange

This is my first Cookie Carnival recipe! Yummy Black-Bottom Coconut Bars.

I stumbled upon the Cookie Carnival recently and I had to join immediately because as we all know, I love a good cookie. Well, any cookie really. Plus, I figured it would give me a good chance to broaden my cookie horizons and try recipes from different cookbooks/sources.

Lately I’ve kinda been stuck in a Martha Stewart rut. I have both her cookie and cupcake books, which are both completely fabulous, but I find myself turning to them over and over again. So, when I learned the recipe for this months Cookie Carnival, wouldn’t it just figure it’s a Martha recipe. That’s okay though. I’m not complaining one little bit. I think Martha is just super. I’m just not sure how she feels about me though. Or if she knows I exist… which I’m 99% sure she doesn’t. Okay, okay, moving on.

Out of my entire family, only one other person (besides myself) likes coconut. Isn’t that sad? So for this recipe, they’re just out of luck! Which means I get half of the yummy bars to myself. Yay for me, not so much for my waistline.

The bars were great!. They were really great! They made me realize that I don’t bake with coconut enough. I will have to fix that. Soon.

The recipe is relatively simple. No mixers or fancy gadgets, just bowls and a whisk.

Get the recipe here.

If you haven’t already, check out the Cookie Carnival.

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© Stormie for BiteSizeBaker.com, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: chocolate, coconut, cookie bars, cookie carnival, Cookies & Bars