October 24, 2011

BLACKOUT COOKIES


I believe the best food comes from improvisation. It doesn't always end well, but when it does - its so worth it. The risk involved adds something that salt can't.

Last night I realized I had half a bar of 90% chocolate laying around, and a desire to make something sweet and time-consuming.  I find the 90% slightly too dark to eat by itself, but thought it could add a grown-up edge to some classic dessert.

Another thing about improvisation - once you start, its sometimes difficult to stop. Once I had tweaked a random cookie recipe to compensate for the limiting amounts of other ingredients I had, it was impossible to just add the chocolate. In went some cocoa powder. A fat swipe of creamy peanut butter. A packet of instant coffee.

I came to thirty minutes later with a smudge of dough on the corner of my mouth and three dozen Blackout Cookies on the cooling rack. Now I'm fighting the urge to make some strange, off-kilter ice cream to stuff between pairs of them. Life is hard.