Chocolate Chubbies

Best.

Cookie.

Name.

Ever.

Marquie and I made these today as a great farewell treat to, well, ourselves. We've had such fun cooking and chatting in the kitchen this week, and this was a totally out of control, over the top way to finish off what has been a truly amazing week. Here's how you eat them:

Step 1: Contemplate

Step 2: Prepare

Step 3: Rocket that thing into your mouth so fast your hand is blurry

Step 4: Lick Fingers

Step 5: Reaction

Chocolate Chubbies

Adapted from Sarabeth Levine

8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

9 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped

3 ounces unsweetened chocolate, finely chopped

1/2 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

3 large eggs, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups superfine sugar

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups (12 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips

1/4 cup white chocolate chips

1/4 cup bittersweet chocolate chips

2 cups peanuts

Preheat oven to 350˚F and line two sheet pans with parchment. Place oven racks in upper and lower thirds oven.

Combine butter, 9 oz. chopped chocolate and 3 oz. unsweetened chocolate in top of a double boiler and heat over barely simmering water until melted completely, combined, and silky smooth. That there is chocolate amazing. Pull it off the heat and let it cool—you'll probably have to stir it from time to time to make that happen in a timely manner.

Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. Put eggs in a large mixer bowl with whisk attachment and beat until they are foamy, about 1 minute. Slowly add sugar and vanilla and continue to beat on medium speed until thick, creamy, and richly pale yellow, 3-4 minutes. Add melted chocolate and beat just until combined. Switch to paddle beater and add flour mixture, mixing until just combined.

Now you add your chubby ingredients: chocolate chips and nuts, and mix until combined. Now, I decided you can use almost anything you have on hand for this, but you need the amounts indicated in the original recipe. We had peanuts and different chocolates, so that's what we used, and they're great. They'd be better with the original walnuts and pecans, to be sure, but what can you do when you're baking cookies first thing in the morning?

Yeah, we're like that.

Use your cookie scoop to mound these onto your cookie sheets, and bake 15-18 minutes, or until they are shiny and just barely start to crackle. Try not to overcook them—you can even leave the centers a little mushy if you want. Cool on the pans, then eat them the way Marquie showed you.

Pancakes and Waffles...now healthier...

I love my new wheat grinder. The great thing about it, besides the fact that it provides freshly ground wheat flour any day, any time, is that is grinds all sorts of other grains. I am now actively grinding dried corn and pursuing recipes that involve cornmeal. Know any good ones?

I have a few recipes lined up to try and today I tried the pancake recipe from this discussion board. It was delightful, and I recommend it to anyone wishing to add more grains to his or her diet. I'll sum up.

Cornmeal Pancakes

• 1 cup cornmeal
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 TB sugar
• 1 cup boiling water
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup milk
• 2 TB butter
• 1/2 cup flour [I used white, but I'm sure whole wheat would have been good]
• 2 tsp baking powder

Combine cornmeal, salt and sugar. Stir in boiling water, cover and let stand 10 min. Meanwhile, beat together egg, milk and butter in one small bowl and mix together flour and baking powder in another. Add them to the cornmeal mixture. Cook on pan or griddle.

After pouring our first pancake we thought it was too runny, so we added flour, then we decided it was to thick and added milk, and in the end we think the original texture was probably just fine, but you are welcome to play around like we did to find the right thickness for you.

We decided to have waffles for dinner one night and I maintained that I did not have a reliable waffle recipe. Dang you Bryce and your '3 second pour of oil' crap! I went fishing on allrecipes.com. This is often where I go looking for recipes. The trick is that once you search for something, click "sort by rating." This way, you'll see all the recipes that everybody just loves. Another trick is to take a glance at the comments, for they often have useful tips for adjusting the recipe to be even better. After such a long intro, here is the recipe:

Whole Grain Waffles

• 2 eggs
• 1 3/4 cup skim milk
• 1/4 cup canola oil [you can replace this with applesauce]
• 1/4 cup applesauce
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup flax seed meal
• 1/4 cup wheat germ
• 1/4 cup white flour
• 4 tsp baking powder
• 1 TB sugar
• 1/4 tsp salt

Mix dry and wet ingredients separately and then combine. Cook in waffle iron until waffles are crisp and golden brown.

Popping Gnocchi

I wish I cooked enough to actually post something useful on this blog, but fortunately Bryce and I found something far better than anything we could have come up with in the kitchen on our own. Check out the popping gnocchi.

Calzones

Okay, so this picture is totally just to make you jealous. But really, they were that good!

I want to let you know what I put in these creations. First, I should let you know that I made these for our "break the fast" meal on Sunday. They were delicious, but we only managed to eat half each!

I made a 1/4 recipe of Heather's pizza dough recipe (half white, half whole wheat), and then put together a mixture of staples and leftovers from the fridge for the filling:

• onions
• garlic
• cherry tomatoes, halved
• 1/2 a cucumber, diced
• 1 cup lettuce, minced
• 1/2 can corn
• 1 shredded carrot
• 1/3 lb ground beef
• 1/2 cup pepperoni slices, quartered

I'm sure there were more things in there, but I can't remember them. I used any and all leftover vegetables I had in the fridge. I combined it with a homemade cream sauce (2 TB butter, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 cup milk), some leftover spaghetti sauce (1/4 cup), and a sprinkle of italian seasoning. Justin did the rolling and pinching, making sure to add shredded cheese on top of the mix before sealing. We baked them at 420 degrees until golden brown and painted with pesto from Costco.

The best part? Jaime loved it. She's starting to be a finicky eater and I get excited when I find something she'll eat a lot of. Excuse me, something HEALTHY that she'll eat a lot of. She's down with junk food.