Today I’m honored to bring you a post from one of my very favorite bloggers –  I’ve been reading Jen at the Beantown Baker for years now.  She’s extremely talented and full of fabulous, no-fail recipes.  Check out her Purple Ombre Cake from her 1000th post celebration!  UH. MAY. ZING.
Thank you, Jen for contributing to Lemon Sugar today!  It’s truly my pleasure.  Enjoy, folks!

Hi everyone! My name is Jen and I blog over at BeantownBaker.com. As the name implies, I live in Boston and I love to bake! I’ve been blogging a little under 5 years and I just recently celebrated my 1000th Post! I live in a tiny condo with my Hubby and our two fat cats. I also blog for Yankee Magazine over at Cooking New England. But enough about me, let’s talk about cookies.

A couple weeks ago my younger sister was in town. We were hanging out and we flipped on the TV. We caught the last few minutes of “Best Thing I Ever Ate” on Food Network. I don’t even know which episode it was, but Rocco DiSpirito was talking about this Levain Bakery Dark Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookie. My sister instantly began professing her love of double chocolate chip
cookies. I said “Let’s make them”.

Since she loves baking almost as much as I do, she agreed without hesitation. So we headed into the kitchen and were glad to find I had all of the ingredients on hand. Within no time, we were tasting the raw cookie dough (it’s awesome) and soon enough, we were eating freshly baked cookies.

We did make a few minor changes to the recipe that we found online. First, we added a sprinkling of sea salt to the cookies just before popping them into the oven. I absolutely adore the combination of sweet and salty together and this light sprinkling really enhances the flavor of any cookie. Try it the next time you make cookies. You can see that these cookies are quite large. That is because we used my cupcake scoop to portion out the cookie dough. This recipe specifically calls for large cookies, but I’ve found that I really like using my cupcake scoop for all cookie recipes. There’s just something about a big cookie that I love.

 

My sister was very satisfied with the results of these cookies. They were very chocolatey and perfectly chewy. As I mentioned, we each ate one fresh out of the oven and just sat in the kitchen enjoying the delicious chocolate cookie that a mere hour before hadn’t even crossed our minds.

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies – adapted from Love from the Oven – makes 12 large cookies

Ingredients:
1 cup (2 sticks) cold, unsalted butter, cubed
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup dark cocoa powder
2 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 1/2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
Sea salt

Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine the butter and sugar. Beat together on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes.

Blend in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl as needed. Mix in the cocoa powder until well blended. Add the flour, salt and baking powder to the bowl and mix on low speed just until incorporated. Fold in the chocolate chips with a spatula.

Transfer the dough to a work surface and knead briefly by hand to be sure the ingredients are well combined. Divide the dough into 4 ounce portions (or divide into 12 equal pieces). Roll each portion of dough into a ball and flatten just slightly into a disc. Sprinkle with sea salt.

Place on the prepared baking sheets, a few inches apart. Bake 16-20 minutes. Let cool on the baking sheets 5-10 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.