Cookies - Fancy Chocolate Refrigerator Cookies

There's a taste of cultural history at the start of the Cookies section of the cook book; it is another poem.

A house should have a cookie jar,
For when it's half-past three,
And children hurry home from school
As hungry as can be,
There's nothing quite so splendid
In filling children up,
As spicy, fluffy ginger cakes,
And sweet milk in a cup.

A house should have a mother,
Waiting with a hug,
No matter what a boy brings home,
A puppy or a bug.
For children only loiter
When the bell rings to dismiss
If no one's home to greet them
With a cookie or a kiss!

Boy, if that doesn't just conjure up a picture of June Cleaver, I don't know what would.  I'll pass on a commentary on gender roles and sentimental conceptions of an idealized past.  That goes without saying.  What does need mentioning though is the whole ginger cakes bit.  Bleh.  If you're waiting with ginger cakes for your bug-toting boy, you'll be waiting for a long time.  I can't argue with cookies and kisses, though.

Background

Before I get into the recipe.  I need to express a little confusion about the cook book.  As I noted in this post, there are a few odd things going on.  There are two sections of cookies:  Cookies, and Fancy Cookies.  It is a little strange that they're not next to one another, but are separated by Donuts, Pies & Desserts, Beverages, Norwegian Dishes, Meats & Hot Dishes, Salads, Candy, Vegetables, Canning, and Diabetic Recipes.  I don't get it.  Additionally, the distinction between a cookie and a fancy cookie is completely lost on me.  According to the Ladies, Walnut Butter Fingers are not fancy, but White Sugar Cookies are.  Then there is the whole Chocolate Drop Cookies issue.  They appear in both sections.  Was Mrs. Lyle Voge more fancy than Mrs. J. C. Botten?

Fancy

Not fancy... who knew?

Then there is the simple fact that the first recipe in the Cookies section is for Fancy Chocolate Refrigerator Cookies.  I don't get it.  Oh well.  Maybe some mysteries can't be solved... or maybe they can.

Preparation

So here's the recipe I worked from this week.

Like most cookie recipes, this one is pretty simple.  I decided to enlist some help.

James is ready to cook!

But he's not ready for how loud our hand mixer is.

He is more than ready to help with the cleaning.  Pretend that the counter behind him is perfectly clean like June Cleaver's would be.

The recipe calls for "Hershey's Baking Chocolate".  I didn't see Hershey's brand baking chocolate, so I picked up another brand.  I got bittersweet chocolate 'cause if I'm baking, I'd rather go that direction than something sweeter.  Melting and mixing in the chocolate was easy enough, but I was skeptical that 1.5 ounces would be enough for my tastes.  The food out of the cook book has been kind of bland so far, and that has also been my experience working through other older recipes.  One of the sources for recipes that I consistently like is Cook's Illustrated.  I love that the articles talk about the science and history of food.  A couple years ago, they did a recipe for chocolate pudding that we really like and there was a little inset in the article about how much chocolate has been used in chocolate pudding recipes over the years that is rather telling.

Now I want to make pudding.

But I am sticking to the recipe the first time around.  Maybe if I make these again, I'll do some alterations.

The resulting cookie dough was pretty soft and sticky.  There was no getting around putting the dough in the refrigerator if it was going to be rolled out.  Even after time in the refrigerator, it wasn't the easiest dough to work with.

This was failure #2

Failure #3

Now the trick is to move one sheet of dough on the other.  Easier said than done.

After rolling the dough up "as for a jelly roll", the dough went back into the refrigerator before it could be cut up.  The recipe said 1/8" slices, which seemed pretty thin to me.  I eyeballed it as best as I could, but the resulting cookies were pretty small.  When I make cookies, I can usually fit nine to twelve cookies on a baking sheet.  I fit probably 35 cookies on each sheet pan for this recipe.  As small as they were, I was concerned about cooking time, but that turned out to be an unfounded fear.  I ultimately made one pinwheel batch with chocolate on the outside, one pinwheel batch with white dough on the outside, and two small batches of the separate doughs alone.

I think these cookies were in the wrong section.

Tasting and Reaction

When you have spirally cookies, there is only one thing to do

Sarah and James take a bite

You may notice these pictures are a bit blurry.  It seems that when I was using the mixer that some of the dough splattered onto the lens of the camera.

Sarah:  James, what do you like?

James:  All of it.

He has a discriminating palate.

Sarah:  I like that they're spirally.  I think they'd go good with church coffee.

James:  What is church coffee?

Church coffee, James, is more about the company than the quality of the coffee.

These cookies are a lot like shortbread cookies.  They're not particularly sweet, and kind of dense.  The chocolate dough is also not very chocolaty.  If I made these again, I would likely double or triple the chocolate, or perhaps even add some espresso powder.  Something needs to be done to amp up the flavor a bit.  It's not that these are bad.  They are just fine, and I think Sarah is right about the coffee.  They would go nicely with a cup of coffee.  I don't know if I would say that they are better than the Scripture Cake from last week.  They're probably close, but I was still left wanting something in these cookies.  

Then it hit me.

Yes, please.  Thank you.  May I have another?  That jar of Nutella is bottomless, right?

So I might even make these again should the need arise.  They are pretty cookies, and with some modification, they could be very good, I think.  I wonder if I could work a small layer of Nutella in between the white and chocolate layers of these cookies.  Hmmmm...

Next time (it may be in a couple weeks due to some extra-curricular activities I have planned):  Donuts!