Truffle Cookies

there's this great chocolate and dessert shop called Ginger Elizabeth in Sacramento that my cousin told me about. they have a great selection of truffles, perfectly baked macarons, cakes...and these melt-in-your-mouth truffle cookies that my friend is really crazy about. so when i saw that a recipe card for the truffle cookies was available in the shop, i decided to take one so i can make them for my friend! these are not for the faint of heart--these cookies are so chocolate-y, i started getting slightly dizzy after eating just one...but they were so, so good... 

i followed the ingredients on the recipe card, but i didn't really follow the instructions on how to make them exactly...first of all, it called for at least 72% cocoa content for the chocolates but i used 73% from Trader Joe's and leftover 60% ghirardelli chocolate chips from safeway. also, i refrigerated my dough for about 70 hours...because my friend wasn't able to visit me on wednesday so i waited until friday afternoon to bake the cookies so i could bring them to my hometown. plus there's a huge craze over NY Times' Quest for the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie, which stated that refrigerating your cookie dough for 12-72 hours will produce a wonderful cookie that is crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside because it allows for the cookie to be baked evenly throughout. according to the article, giving the dough lots of time in the fridge makes the dough drier, as the dry ingredients soak up all the wet ingredients! it's such a great article!! i think i read it more than twice :D so refrigerate the crap out of your cookies!...(but no longer than 72 hours...) and be in awe of the voluptuous sexiness!

Ingredients

8 ounces chocolate, 72% cocoa (i used 73% from Trader Joe's)

4 tablespoons butter 

2 eggs

3/4 cup lightly packed brown sugar

1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons all purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup chocolate, 72% cocoa (i used mostly my leftover 60% ghirardelli chocolate chips and two squares of the 73% chocolate from Trader Joe's)

 cut the butter up in pieces so it can soften faster.

melt the 8 oz. chocolate on a double boiler

 then when my butter was ready, i slowly poured in my chocolate and beat the mixture together for a couple of minutes.

 then i used my rubber spatula to bring everything together mmm. 

 i set the chocolate/butter mixture aside and beat my eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla extract, until it was a really pale yellow. this also helps the cookie from being flat and lame-looking (i'm so obsessed with preventing my cookies from being so nasty flat because the last time i made cookies...that's exactly what happened...and i assume it's because i didn't cream the butter enough until it was light and fluffy and i didn't beat the eggs until pale yellow) 

 then add the chocolate mixture into the egg mixture and beat

 i beated it for a little, and then i used my rubber spatula to get everything together 

 yay! well mixed!

 i sifted the flour, baking powder, and salt together 

 and folded the dry ingredients in three additions very, very gently into the chocolate mixture, just until i stopped seeing white flecks.

 after the third addition of the dry ingredients, i stopped folding when there were some hints of white present...

 and then added the chocolate chips (so i won't have to be mixing this batter excessively..which probably contributes to a flat cookie...)

 yum..so chocolate-y, it's amazing.

 i transferred the batter into a smaller bowl (look how sexy it looks!!)

 and wrapped in saran wrap twice. i left it in the fridge for 70 hours!

 after the 70 hours, i placed wax paper on my sheet pan and quickly scooped out some batter with my ice cream scoop!

 i flattened them a little...and put them in a 350 degree oven for 8 minutes. 

when it's been in the oven for 3-4 minutes, i turned the pan 180 degrees for even cooking! 

the cookies were big and thick, the insides were melt-y, even a day after it was made. personally, i liked these cookies a day after they were baked, simply because the whole cookie solidified more, making it taste more like a cookie than a melted brownie. but these cookies were basically like cookie brownies...crownies.