TWD: Mocha(less) Chocolate Chunk Cookies

This week's TWD was fine by me.  I love chocolate chip cookies.  But I was a little confused when I looked at the P&Q page and saw that people were talking about apricots.??  I thought maybe I had no idea what we were really making this week. But guess what!  There were apricots listing in the recipe ingredients.  With the word (optional) next to it.  Phew!  I am not sure I'm cool enough to ruin my cookies with apricots at this point.  (Maybe one day I will look back and laugh at this comment.  I mean, I did eat a beet the other day and I've held out on those since I was about 5.  It wasn't so bad.  One day I might morph into a chocolate-chunk-and-apricot-cookie eating fool.  Never say never.)  I also left out the mocha since we aren't coffee drinkers.  I didn't want to seem like a loser though so I threw some walnuts into a few of the cookies.

I used semi-sweet chocolate and instead of buying chunks I cut my own. About at this point (below) I was wondering why I didn't just buy those perfect chunks at the store.  Nothing perfect about this mess.  And the recipe said something about white chocolate so I threw some white chocolate chips in too.

 I guess the overnight chill is supposed to develop flavors and stiffen the dough.  Well, I skipped it.  The recipe didn't specify to soften the butter, so I used mine cold and by the time I got the dough formed, it didn't seem to need fridge time to me.  And let's face it, if a cookie recipe HAS to be put in the fridge overnight, I will find another recipe.  I can't trust myself to have that kind of forethought. 

 To slightly make up for skipping the chill, after I scooped (I used my 1 oz scoop) the dough onto the cookie sheet, I put the second pan in the freezer for 15 minutes while the first pan baked.

 The first, non cold batch seemed to do just fine.  They were a little less cripsy around the edges when they came out of the oven.  I think the colder ones get browner edges while waiting for the cold center to bake.

 Either way, no complaints here!  We all loved them!   I made some for Tyler with just white chocolate chips and he said he wanted about a hundred of them. The rest of us all loved the chocolate chunks.

  Next time I would probably skip the chill again and leave the cookies on the cookie sheet for a minute to cool before removing them to a rack.  They wanted to fall apart a bit right out of the oven but after a minute or so, it was easy.

This was a great recipe and you can never have too many great cookie recipes! (In my opinion, anyway)  You can buy the book, or get the recipe at our host blog for the week:  Galettista

If you'd like to see what the other TWD bakers did you can go HERE.