Chocolate Cookies Two Ways

Irony:  I have been baking sweets almost daily while trying to do Weight Watchers. 

Anyway, tonight's baking adventure involved a recipe from one of my favorite cookie books: "Martha Stewart's Cookies".  Besides the reliable and consistently good recipes, my favorite thing about the book is the table of contents.  It categorizes the cookies by texture (i.e. light and delicate or soft and chewy or crumbly and sandy).  AND each cookie is accompanied by a picture in the table of contents which makes it easy to find the right goodie to satisfy your craving.

So, under the 'soft and chewy' heading, I settled on 'Grammy's Chocolate Cookies' which are a dark chocolate cookie rolled in sanding sugar.  Yum!  I had half a bag of very good white chocolate chips in the freezer that were calling my name so I divided the dough in half and put the chips in one half and then followed the recipe with the sanding sugar for the second half.

Both versions are pretty good.  There's just nothing wrong with dark chocolate cookies studded with white chocolate chips.  (They did seem to come out thinner though...not sure why.) The original version, with the sanding sugar, are pretty and sparkly and have a wonderful crunch but they are a little too sweet, it may be better to dip the top half in the sugar as opposed to rolling entire dough ball in it.  Will I make these again?  Probably not. There are much better recipes out there...but these ones were not bad.

Recipe for Grammy's Chocolate Cookies

adapted from Martha Stewart

2 c. plus 2 T. flour
3/4 c. cocoa powder
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 1/4 c. unsalted butter, room temp.
2 c. sugar
2 large eggs
2 t. vanilla
sanding sugar for rolling
*I added white chocolate chips to half the dough

Sift flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in bowl.

In bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter and sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy (2 minutes).  Add eggs and vanilla and beat to combine.  Reduce speed to low and gradually add flour mixture.  Beat to combine.  Form dough into flattend disk and wrap in saran wrap.  Refrigerate until firm.  (I put mine in freezer for 30 minutes)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Shape dough into 1 1/4 inch balls.  Roll each ball in sanding sugar and place on baking sheet with parchment paper.  Bake until set 10 to 12 minutes.  Cool 5 minutes on baking sheet before putting on cooling rack.

What you can't see in the picture above is how the sugar melted into the cookie creating a crunchy shell.

How many points did I just eat???  Was it worth it?