Blessed by the Potato

Yield: 40-50; Oven temp: 350°F

Ingredients:

3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2/3 cup cocoa powder
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/4 tsp salt
1 pkg Resse Peanut Butter chips (or chocolate chips, but the peanut butter chips are highly recommended)
1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional)
~1/4 cup icing sugar

Method:

1. In a small mixing bowl combine flour and baking powder.
2. Beat oil, sugar, and cocoa together in a large mixing bowl. Add eggs to oil and cocoa mixture one egg at a time, beating well after each addition. Stir in vanilla. Mix in flour mixture. Fold in nuts if desired. Chill the dough for 1-2 hours.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheet/use parchment paper.
4. Use a spoon to get out walnut-size balls and roll each ball in confectioners’ sugar.
5. Bake cookies for 12 to 15 minutes.

A few notes on method:

The batter for these cookies is very, very sticky. Be sure to use lots of icing sugar on your hands when rolling them or they’ll stick. Balling them usually just involves shaking them in one hand with a very loose grip (so they bounce around between your fingers) and then dropping them right on the pan. Even with the icing sugar, expect them to stick to your pan when baking, so I highly recommend using some parchment paper.

Comments:

I was first turned on to the idea of brownie cookies by Duncan: one night when him, Jamie and I were at Dominion and I picked up a few bags of chocolate chips. Jamie paid for them, on the condition that I would put them into cookies that he & Duncan could share in. Duncan said that his mom used to make these brownie cookies that were oh so good, so I went looking on the Internet for the recipe. I came across several conflicting versions, and blended them together into a surprisingly workable recipe. Being mostly American in origin, the recipes had way more salt than is healthy, so the first modification I made was to cut that down. I also cut down a bit on the oil, and if you’re concerned you could probably make them with even less and still get a workable product.

I can’t find a record of Duncan saying that mine were even better than his mom’s, but I know he did say that they were at least different.

Chocolate brownie cookies have been near the top of my favourites list since I started making them, and have appeared many times. Most notably, these cookies were the ones turned down by Cheryl on the Night of Seven (as it’s come to be known), and Tak’s girlfriend Kate turned her nose up at them, too. I brought them with me to the first Hamilton BBQ, they were the first batch of cookies I brought with me to work this year, and I also made some of them for Wayfare on our first date.

A quick note: this recipe makes a lot of cookies (3-4 pan cookie sheets full for me, about 40-50 cookies). Turns out many people are used to making cookies in smaller batches, so one day when Anita was making cookies for a party, and wanted a lot of cookies (like 50-75), she decided to triple this recipe. Hours and hundreds of cookies later…