The challenge theme this month is spices. I wasn't necessarily looking for a spice cookie, but I happened upon this recipe, which had rave reviews. Terrible name, but it seems "dirty chai" is a particular type of drink in which a shot of espresso is poured into a cup of spiced chai. (Why not just make spiced coffee???) And the "earthquake" part is from the cracks in the sugar coating.
It's a small recipe, so I made the whole thing, which is supposed to make only 2 dozen cookies. The only change I made was an adjustment of salt, using salted butter, which I countered by reducing the salt in the ingredient list but ultimately resulted in a higher salt content than the original recipe, and I substituted out malted milk powder. Here's what I used:
1/2 cup unsalted butter (1 stick)
1 tablespoon finely ground coffee (not instant)
2 cups all-purpose flour, sifted then measured (255 grams)
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 1/4 teaspoon kosher fine sea salt
1/2 teaspoon finely ground black pepper
2 large eggs
3/4 cup light brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract or paste
2 tablespoons malted milk powder, such as Carnation brand malt syrup
1/4 cup granulated sugar, for rolling
1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted, for rolling
Brown the butter in a small saucepan over low heat, swirling and stirring occasionally, until nutty brown, 5 to 6 minutes. Pour over the espresso/coffee in a small metal bowl and stir to combine. Set aside to cool, stirring occasionally. Sift together the flour, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, salt, and pepper; set aside. With an electric mixer, combine eggs, and light brown sugar in a medium bowl and beat on medium speed until well combined and slightly paler, about 3 minutes, scraping bowl as needed. Add the vanilla and malt syrup to the butter mixture, stirring to combine, then add that to the egg mixture and mix on low speed until combined. Add the flour mixture, then mix again on low until combined. Transfer dough to a resealable glass or plastic container and chill thoroughly, at least 2 hours and up to 3 days.
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Put granulated sugar and confectioners’ sugar into two separate bowls. Portion dough into heaping tablespoons (about 25 grams each); roll into smooth balls and drop a few at a time into the bowl of granulated sugar, rolling to coat. Transfer to the bowl with the confectioners’ sugar and roll gently, coating well and place in freezer until firm, about 10 minutes. Place on a greased baking sheet, flattening slightly (if you want a less domed cookie) and bake until cookies are still quite tender (they will firm up as they cool), 12 to 14 minutes. Let cool a few minutes on the baking sheets and transfer to wire racks to cool completely.
The dough sat tightly covered in my refrigerator for 3 days before I
baked off half of it; that resting time should have really improved the
flavor and enhanced the spices, but it didn't seem to. I did find the
cookies dry; they might be less so if I used an air-insulated
pan.
My scale wasn't working, so I couldn't measure out 25g of dough. I was further confused by the instructions to use a "small" cookie scoop or a heaping tablespoon. I have a SMALL cookie scoop that's about a teaspoon, and another that's about a tablespoon -- obviously I don't call the larger one the "small" one. I used the tablespoon-sized scoop and heaped the dough in to round it out so it made something resembling a sphere and didn't bother to roll it any better than that-- they came out about 1.25" in diameter (and went straight into the sugar.) Perhaps they were a little too small, because they were quite firm at 12 minutes. (I can't believe some people baked them for 15 minutes and more... then complained they were dry.)
Some people had trouble with the crusts not "cracking", and one piece of advice was to coat them heavily with the powdered sugar. I think that probably just makes the cracking more prominent for appearance, but likely doesn't affect the tendency to crack or not crack. And the last thing these needed was more sugar. However, I followed that advice, unfortunately, as it was too much sugar in the first batch. I used a lighter touch with the next batch and also experimented with other coatings: coarse sugar, nonpareils, and none.
Obviously, nothing gave the intended effect other than the heavy powdered sugar coating. The light sugar coating looked sad. The coarse sugar looked okay -- the nonpareils not so much, and the plain were downright unappetizing.
Conclusion: I'm not a fan of sugar-coated cookies, but I thought the dough was going to be less sweet with these so it would be okay. It was not. My initial impression was that, if I focused, I noticed the spice flavors, but if I didn't it just tasted sugary. I didn't detect browned butter at all. After I'd swallowed the last bite, I detected heat, probably from the pepper, and then coffee (perhaps from a stray ground), both mild. No other spice stood out, they all melded together in a pleasant warmth; it just wasn't enough to counter the sugar. In the end, I decided this tasted a lot like a cinnamon cake doughnut and so tried it dunked in coffee.... Delightful! But only as originally prepared, with the crisp, sugary crust. Any other preparation or technique fell short.
Recipe: Dirty Chai Earthquake Cookies via NYTimes Cooking
No comments:
Post a Comment