Best Chocolate Walnut Cookies
Submitted by momholt_3
Slice-and-bake chocolate walnut cookies built on a flourless-style dough with a pound of melted semi-sweet chocolate, espresso, walnuts, and chocolate chips. Crackly tops, fudgy centers, almost no flour.
YIELD
36 servingsPREP
30 minCOOK
15 minREADY
45 minThese eat more like brownies than cookies. The ratio is the giveaway: a pound of melted chocolate against just half a cup of cake flour, which is barely enough to hold the dough together. The cookies bake up shiny and cracked on top, almost glossy, with that fudgy under-baked center brownie hunters chase.
A tablespoon of strong espresso is the kind of detail that separates good chocolate desserts from great ones. It doesn’t make them taste like coffee. It deepens the chocolate so it tastes more like itself. Beating the eggs and sugar for a full 4 to 6 minutes until thick and pale is also non-skip territory. That whip is what creates the crackly top during baking.
The dough gets formed into a log and chilled for 3 hours, slice-and-bake style, which means you can make it ahead and bake fresh batches all week. Walnuts and a generous pour of chocolate chips fold in at the end for crunch and pockets of melted chocolate in every bite.
Chef Tips
- Cool the melted chocolate until it’s just warm to the touch before adding it to the egg mixture. Hot chocolate scrambles the eggs and breaks the dough.
- Cake flour matters here. All-purpose has too much protein and the cookies lose their tender, fudgy texture.
- Don’t overbake. Pull them at 15 minutes even if they look soft. They firm up dramatically as they cool on the sheet.
- The dough log can be wrapped tight and frozen for up to a month. Slice frozen and add 2 minutes to the bake.
Variations
- Swap walnuts for toasted pecans or hazelnuts.
- Roll the chilled log in flaky sea salt before slicing for a salted-chocolate finish.
- Sub the semi-sweet for a mix of bittersweet and semi-sweet chocolate for a more grown-up bite.
Ingredients
Directions
In the bowl of an electric mixer beat the eggs and the sugar for 4 to 6 minutes, or until the mixture is thick and pale.
Add melted chocolate, butter, vanilla, espresso, flour, salt and the baking powder, and beat the mixture on the lowest setting until it is combined well.
Add the chocolate chips and the walnuts and beat the dough until it is combined well.
In a sheet of parchment paper, form the dough into a log, 4 inches in diameter.
Wrap it in wax paper, and chill it for 3 hours, or until it is firm. Cut the log into 1-inch-thick rounds, arrange the rounds 2 inches apart on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
Bake them in batches in the middle of a preheated 350℉ (180℃) oven for 15 minutes, or until the tops are shiny and cracked slightly.
Transfer the baking sheets to racks and let the cookies cool completely before removing them from the sheets.
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