Thick & Chewy Double-Chocolate Cookies

Makes about 42 cookies

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 16 oz semisweet chocolate
• 4 large eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tsp instant coffee or espresso powder
• 10 tbsp (1.25 sticks) butter
• 1.5 cups light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar

Equipment

• 1 small bowl
• 1 medium bowl
• 1 large bowl
• 1 double boiler, or a heat-safe bowl you can use as one
• Various measuring devices
• Mixer (or brute strength)
• Spatula
• some sort of spoon or scoop for plopping the cookies
• a fork or whisk to stir the eggs
• Parchment paper
• two or three cookie sheets.

Boring prep bits

- Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt in the medium bowl.

- Beat eggs and vanilla gently in a small bowl, then sprinkle the instant coffee or espresso powder on top and leave it to soak in.

- Chop up your semisweet chocolate. Place the double boiler or heat-safe bowl over a small pan of water. The water shouldn't touch the bottom of the bowl/boiler. Put the chocolate in the bowl/boiler and heat the water in the pan to a simmer. Melt the chocolate until it's smooth, stirring as necessary. It's a lot of chocolate so it may take 10 minutes or more. Here is how it should look when it's smooth:

While the chocolate is melting, go on to step 2.

Step 2: Violence!

- In your large bowl, beat the butter with a mixer or by hand until smooth and creamy. I missed this step because I am at times functionally illiterate.

- Beat the sugars into the butter until combined, like this, only yours should have fewer butter lumps because you can read, right?

- On low (or, if doing it manually, "less vehement"), mix the egg-vanilla-coffee monstrosity in gradually. Your dough will suddenly look like cake batter and you will worry, but it's okay, we'll fix it.

- Remember your chocolate? It should be smoothly melted by now. With the mixer on, pour the chocolate into your batter in a steady stream. It's a LOT of chocolate, so be sure to use your spatula to get everything mixed together properly, like this:

- On low, mix in the dry ingredients until just combined. I actually had to go up to medium since I was using a handheld mixer and this stuff is THICK. No more cake batter, no sir.

- Cover with plastic wrap and ignore for 30 minutes.

Step 3: Waiting...

- Meanwhile, adjust your oven racks to upper- and lower- middle position, and preheat to 350. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Do use paper, not just grease, because you have to fiddle around with the cookies a bit later. - Now do your dishes because otherwise your double boiler will cool and gain a chocolate shell. Ugh.

Step 4: The heat is on

- The book says that after about 30 minutes your batter will be "fudgy." This is an understatement; I am pretty sure that this is the volcanic mud that buried Herculaneum after Mt. Vesuvius erupted... Anyway, scoop out small balls of this chocolate concrete and place about 1.5 inches apart on your parchment papered cookie sheets. Ping-pong ball sized worked well for me. You will probably get about 3/4 of your batter on the sheets in this round unless you're using 3, so expect that.

- Bake the sheets for 10 minutes, switching them from top to bottom and turning them around at the 5 minute mark.

- Remove from the oven and let them cool for about 10 minutes on the sheets. Your cookies are pretty squishy at the moment, so don't try to move them.

- After 10 minutes, slide the parchment paper on to some cooling racks and prepare the rest of your dough. Cook it and cool it just like the others.

Delicious

Enjoy, possibly with a cup of tea or milk. Ohgodguys it's like eating a giant, squishy chocolate chip. So delicious.

Thanks for watching.