Chocolate Espresso Cookies

Recently I decided to make cookies for a friend having a rough day, and I found this great site online.

http://www.webterrace.com/cookie/index.htm

It has a lot of annoying pop-up ads, but also some great recipes.

We made two kinds, the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies, and the Espresso Chocolate Chip Cookies. The latter were a huge hit, so here's the recipe, followed by Epiqueerean's modifications:


Chocolate Chip Espresso Cookies

Ingredients

3 (1 ounce) squares unsweetened chocolate
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup butter
3 eggs
1 cup white sugar
2 1/4 teaspoons finely ground espresso beans
3/4 cup all-purpose flour (actually more!)
1/3 teaspoon baking powder (actually more!)
1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper. In the top of a double boiler, melt together the unsweetened chocolate, 1 cup of the chocolate chips and the butter. This can also be done in a microwave oven on low setting. Stir occasionally until melted. In a medium bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until thick and light, about 3 minutes. Stir in the espresso. Add the chocolate mixture, mix well. Sift together the flour and baking powder, fold into the egg mixture. Carefully fold in the chopped nuts and remaining chocolate chips. Drop dough by tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Cookies will have a crackled appearance when done. Cool on baking sheets.

So, here are our modifications:

1. We used Lindt 65% cacao dark chocolate instead of unsweetened chocolate. This was simply because we did not have any unsweetened chocolate and were too lazy to go buy any.

2. We left out the walnuts. (My friend is allergic)

3. Most importantly, we added way more flour and baking powder than the recipe called for. The dough was soupy when we followed the recipe so we added this at the end. Unfortunately I did not measure at the time, so just add more baking powder and more flour until the dough is sticky enough to make balls on the cookie sheet (I'd say we added approx. double what the recipe calls for). It also helps to chill the dough before you put it on the cookie sheet, and it tends to thicken as it cools so don't add too much flour!

So there you go. These cookies got rave reviews and they have a substantial caffeine kick too!