Just don’t call chocolate sugar cookies, cookie cutters
Sugar cookies are crowd-pleasers to begin with, and when they are flavored with chocolate they are taken to a whole new ethereal level.
That’s quite a feat considering that sugar cookies call for the most basic of ingredients — sugar, flour, butter, egg and baking soda. You could add some salt to cut through the sweet and a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract to perfume it but they are still staples of a baking pantry.
Chocolate sugar cookies also involve the simplest of steps. Once the ingredients are combined to make a dough, which does not need to be chilled to firm up, it is rolled into balls and then flattened with a bottom of a glass into cookies and sprinkled with sugar on the top. They are baked for about 15 minutes and later cooled for about 5. And ta-da, soft sugar cookies with a crisp edge are ready.
When adding chocolate to the
cookies, I prefer the real deal — and by that I mean unsweetened dark cocoa powder. Any other kind is just a hot chocolate mix. Also, I opt for natural over Dutch process as the cookies tend to be chalky when the latter is used.
It’s important not to melt all the butter for these cookies and instead keep aside four tablespoons of cold butter. If all the butter is melted and added to the dough, the cookies spread too much, say the bakers of America’s Test Kitchen, and I concur.
The cookies are large and make a good case for bigger is better.
However, there’s only one tiny problem with chocolate sugar cookies. You might not go back to baking the plain old ones, and if you do there might not be takers.