February ABC challenge: Chocolate Chile Almond Cookies

This month's challenge is "chocolate."  I don't have access to New Mexican chiles, so I had to come up with a substitute.  In savory dishes (think chile rellenos), Anaheims are the usual replacement, but those weren't available either.  I settled on a poblano, with a serrano as backup in case it was too mild.

I made half the recipe and it produced about 3 dozen cookies.

1 cup (2 sticks) butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

2½  cups all-purpose flour

1½  teaspoons baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 cup chopped almonds, toasted

1/4 cup chopped green New Mexican chile

2 ounces sweet chocolate

1 tablespoon rum

Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy; stir in the egg and vanilla.  Sift together the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon; add to the butter mixture and mix well.  Add the almonds and chile.   Melt the chocolate and allow to cool.  Stir the rum into the chocolate and mix into the dough. Roll the dough into a 2-inch diameter roll and wrap in foil.  Refrigerate for 12 hours or overnight.  

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Slice into ¼-inch rounds and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet.  (They can be somewhat close together.)  Bake for 8 -- 10 minutes until just browned around the edges.

I roasted the chiles with the idea that it would bring out the sweetness.  However, that changed the volume, so I used only a heavily packed tablespoon, instead of the 2 that half the recipe would have required.  The poblano was quite hot, so I added only a small amount of the serrano.

I tried two ways of cutting these:  "thinly" as instructed by the recipe, and in very thick chunks that I then cut into quarters and placed on the sheet point up.  They bake up crisply, so the thin wafers worked better.

Conclusion:  These were delicious!  Crisp and buttery with a mild cocoa flavor.  But no heat.  Not at all.  Every now and then I got a little piece of chile that I could taste, but even that wasn't hot.  I thought the long time in the refrigerator was partially to distribute the heat.  I also couldn't taste the rum at all and didn't expect to.  Nonetheless, they're worth making again.

Recipe: via Chile Pepper magazine, June 1993 (Fiesta Canning Co., Inc.)

Habanero Pumpkin Nut Cookies

The habanero powder was blisteringly hot.  I wanted to make sure there was enough salt to counter the heat.  I added it gradually, but ended up doubling the original amount.

I made half the recipe and it yielded about one and a half dozen cookies.

3/4 cup canned pumpkin

1/2 cup sour cream

3/4 cup light brown sugar

1 egg, beaten

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 3/4 cup seedless raisins currants

1/2 cup chopped walnuts 

1½  cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon ginger

1/2 teaspoon habanero chile powder

1/2 1 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Combine the pumpkin, sour cream, sugar, egg, and vanilla and mix well. Stir in the raisins and the walnuts. Sift the dry ingredients together, then stir into the pumpkin mixture until just mixed. Drop by tablespoons onto a lightly greased cookie sheet. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

I'm not a fan of raisins, so I used currants and reduced the quantity a little since they're smaller. To make the habanero powder, I thinly sliced the chiles, then baked them at 200 degrees. They promptly burned to a crisp (which I saved to use on savory dishes.) Others have used this technique, but probably didn't cut them into thin slices. The next batch I let dry out in a barely warm oven, about 100 degrees, until they were crisp. I tried to avoid using any seeds in the cookies; they didn't break up when I ground the chiles in a mortar and pestle.

Conclusion:  These were very tasty. Nice spice level, and not too sweet.  They had the perfect level of heat, medium spicy, but the texture was a little off.  They were a little spongy rather than cakey, which would suggest too much liquid even though the dough wasn't particularly wet (for a drop dough.)  They seemed like they needed something, so I added a hard sauce frosting.  I'd like to convert this recipe to a muffin, with perhaps a cream cheese frosting.

Recipe:  via Chile Pepper magazine, June 1993 (Fiesta Canning Co., Inc.)