As-fudgy-as-it-kann (AFAIK) bitter double chocolate cookies

Sorry about the title, German speakers! This dark chocolate cookie is, AFAIK, really the fudgiest. I really need to use this abbreviation. Tested and perfected for 5 months, I am finally producing cookies that are... kind of sought after! They are usually gone way too quickly once I bring them to work.

(Click to jump to recipe)

The crumb of the AFAIK cookie

The recipe is a reaction from my following complaints about store-bought chocolate cookies:

1. They are too sweet;
2. They do not taste chocolate-y enough;
3. They are often either hard and dry, or chewy but stale;
4. The chocolate chips are often hard and awkwardly separated from the dough around it;

This recipe is the opposite of all of the above. These cookies give a dark chocolate vibe instead of a milk chocolate vibe, if you know what I mean. The chocolate and the dough fade into each other to give incredibly fudgy and variable textures throughout the crumb.

Oh, by the way, they can be made entirely vegan.

This recipe would ideally be executed in strict chronological order, like a lab protocol. You can save time waiting/thinking about the sequence of the steps.

For around 8-10 medium cookies

Tools

• A pot or large mixing bowl
• A medium bowl (e.g. soup bowl)
• A small bowl, glass jar, or cup
• An oven
• A balance
• A tablespoon-sized spoon
• A teaspoon-sized spoon
• Spatula(s)
• A butter knife
• Baking paper and sheet

Ingredients

Wet mixture

• 50 g butter or vegan butter
• 10 more grams butter or equal amount of your favorite nut butter for a flavor boost
• 50 g granulated sugar
• 1 teaspoon honey or syrup of choice
• 1.5 tablespoon flax and chia seeds/meal combined
  • feel free to vary the proportions
  • if unavailable, use 1/2 cup applesauce
• 1/2 cup or 120 mL boiling-hot water
• Vanilla extract (optional)
• One of the following:
  • 1 tablespoon lemon juice (1/4 squeezed lemon)
  • 1 tablespoon yoghurt, ayran, or kefir
  • 1/2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
  • ...or anything acidic of an adequate amount. This ensures that the cookies turn out soft and prevents them from going stale quickly.

Dry mixture

• 130 g all-purpose flour (Nr.405 in Germany)
• 17 g alkalized cocoa powder (also called Dutch-processed)
  • Untreated cocoa probably works too, but I have not tested it.
• 0.5 teaspoon baking powder
• 0.25 teaspoon baking soda (NaHCO3)
• 0.25 teaspoon table salt

Straight-into-the-dough things

• 50-100 g dark chocolate bar (to taste, use vegan ones if desired)

  caution

  I would recommend against using pre-chopped chocolate chips sold in bags. They melt way less nicely in the cookie dough. I will give tips on how to chop chocolate bars into chips easily by yourself here.

• A pinch more salt to sprinkle on the top of the cookies (must have!)

Steps

Step 1

Boil water. Meanwhile, add the 1.5 tablespoon flax and chia seeds/meal combined into a small cup or jar. We will use this to make a flax pudding to moisturize the dough.

Pour poiling water over the flax and chia mixture. Stir briefly and set aside.

Step 2

In the pot or big mixing bowl, add (softened) butter, nut butter (if using), sugar, and honey/syrup.

Mix into a paste. If the butter is hard to mix, warm up the pot a little bit.

Step 3

Add the flax pudding in step 1 into the mixture from step 2.

Then add vanilla and the acid (yoghurt, vinegar, lemon, etc). Stir until even.

Step 4

In a different bowl, mix all dry ingredients from the list above.

Mix the dry ingredients until uniform.

Step 5

Dump all the dry mix from step 4 into the wet mix from step 3. Stir until even. The resulting dough should look like a borderline dough-batter complex, sticky but not fluid.

Step 6

Now chop the dark chocolate bar into chocolate bits, each around the size of a dry pea, as shown in the following picture.

I chop the chocolate squares into 6 like this:

tip

Chopping dark chocolate evenly could be difficult since they are hard and brittle. They should not be cut through like soft milk chocolate. Instead, only use a butter knife or something not too sharp but has a long blade. To cut dark chocolate effectively, position the knife on the piece of chocolate like a see-saw on a pivot. Put each hand on each side of the see-saw. Firmly push down with both hands while doing a see-saw motion. The chocolate pivot should split in half very cleanly and easily.

I do not recommend sawing dark chocolate through like slicing bread, it would take forever!

Step 7

Add the chopped chocolate into the dough in step 5 and fold until the chocolate nibs are evenly distributed.

Now, weigh the entire dough if you are able to. It should amount to 400-500 grams. My dough weighs 470 grams, so I will know to plan for 9 cookies, each a little bit over 50 grams.

Step 8

Scoop the dough in 50-gram balls and arrange them on a piece of baking paper. Slightly flatten them with a spoon to prevent the cookies from being too thick and underbaked.

tip

Try to make sure that each cookie has a few chocolate nibs on the top as well as covered inside. The two positions of chocolate will melt into very different textures: the inner chocolate bits will combine with the dough and produce a "locally brownie" texture, whereas the outer ones will just melt into liquid chocolate.

Step 9

Freeze the cookie dough balls for 30 mins or refrigerate for an hour. Don't idle the entire time, though: start pre-heating the oven to 180 °C (360 °F) with the fan on, if your oven has one.

Step 10

Just before baking, sprinkle the top of the cookies with a few grains of salt. This makes a huge difference for the flavor, so don't skip this step!

Step 11

If your oven has a fan, bake the cookies for 10 minutes, otherwise for 12-14 minutes.

After the time is up, turn off the oven and leave the cookies inside for 3-5 more minutes with the door closed (check to make sure they are not burnt).

Then, take the baking sheet out of the oven (or just open the oven door wide), but do not lift the cookies or baking paper off the hot baking sheet. Let them sit for another 30 minutes to set and cool down.

Now enjoy a piece of fresh, fudgy cookie!

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Enjoy the recipe!

XH