Outrageous Chocolate Chunk Cookies

For Valentine’s Day, I wanted to make a batch of very rich chocolate cookies to give to friends… and have a few for my evening chocolate cravings’.  Lisa turned me onto this recipe and these really are “outrageous!”  These cookies have the perfect amount of rich chocolate that will have you reaching for an ice cold glass of milk and another bite because you cannot believe how good these taste.  One is just not enough!

In my kitchen, I have a huge bag of chocolate chip morsels at all times and use my electronic scale to measure out the quantity needed for a given recipe.  If you have never used one of these scales, the trick is to put your empty bowl on the scale before you turn it on.  When powered on, the scale automatically sets to zero and displays the weight of the ingredients as you fill your bowl.  Very smart technology!  You will need 8oz. of semi-sweet morsels or chopped semi-sweet chocolate.  I like morsels because there is no mess of chopping the chocolate.

• Preheat your oven to 350 degrees and make sure two baking racks are evenly spaced in the middle of the oven.
• Place 8oz of semi-sweet chocolate and 4 tablespoons of unsalted butter in a microwaveable dish.

You will be melting the chocolate and butter slowly, in 20 second intervals.  This is the tricky part because if you heat it too long, you will burn the chocolate.  Truth be told, I burned my first batch of chocolate.  I was trying to go slowly and I think my last 20 seconds was 10 seconds too long.  This is the most important part of the recipe, so do not answer the phone or respond to a text at this time.  I had to tell my children to leave the kitchen, so I could concentrate when I started my second batch!  (This is another reason why I have a huge bag of chocolate and lots of butter in my fridge, I need to be prepared for do-overs!

• Place 2 eggs, 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and 3/4 cups of light brown sugar in your electric mixer.
• Blend until it is mixed  thoroughly.

• Pour, or rather scoop, the melted chocolate into the egg mixture.  Blend completely.

• In another bowl, whisk 2/3 cups of flour, 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt.

• Blend the flour mixture into the chocolate batter.

• Mix in 1 package (12oz) chocolate chunks.

• Bake the cookies for 6 minutes, rotate the sheets in the oven and bake for another 6 minutes (Total baking time: 12 minutes)  They should be soft in the middle when you remove them from the oven.

• Do not take the cookies immediately off the cookie sheets.  Let them rest for a bit, so that they harden ever so slightly, and then use your spatula to move them to a wire rack to cool completely.

I placed two cookies in a clear bag, with ribbon and a little love note for Valentine’s Day.

I then made my own Valentine treat on a red and white napkin.