Sunday, July 1, 2012

The Addictive Crunch



          There's something about crunchy foods that is just addictive. Popcorn, chips, toffee, you name it  -- once you start it's hard to stop. Tonight, I proved this theory once again. I got home from church and decided that I needed some cookies. I was going to bake up some of my normal tried and true chocolate chip cookies (I'll share that recipe sometime later), but I had some flaked coconut in my pantry that I've been meaning to use up so I decided that some Toasted Coconut Chocolate Chunk Cookies were in order. I have tried this recipe once before and they turned out super tasty so I gave it another try! This recipe has you toast some flaked sweetened coconut in the oven before you add it to the cookie batter. The coconut comes out of the oven a rich golden brown color, perfectly toasted and amazingly crunchy. To add even more crunch, I (chocolate lovers don't hate me!) replaced half of the chocolate chunks with toffee bits. The cookies were delicious. They came out thin with a crisp outer layer and a chewy yet crunchy interior. Heaven. And addictive. Yeah, yeah, ok so you got me, I ate like five. I'll probably go get another, geez get off my back!


Yield: 2 dozen
88 calories per cookie



  • Ingredients:
  • 1 cup flaked sweetened coconut
  • 4 1/2 ounces all-purpose flour (about 1 cup)
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1/8 teaspoon salt
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • large egg 
  • 2 ounces dark chocolate (70% cacao), chopped
  • Cooking spray

  • Directions: 
  •      1. Preheat oven to 350°.
  •      2. Arrange coconut in a single layer in a small baking pan. Bake at 350° for 7 minutes or until lightly toasted, stirring once. Set aside to cool.
  •      3. Weigh or lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl; stir with a whisk until blended. Place sugar and butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended. Beat in vanilla and egg. Add flour mixture, beating at low speed just until combined. Stir in toasted coconut and chocolate.
  •      4. Drop by level tablespoons 2 inches apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 10 minutes or until bottoms of cookies just begin to brown. Remove from pan, and cool completely on wire racks.
Tips:
  • Keep a close eye on the coconut when you toast it in the oven. It can burn really fast!
  • As you noticed, this recipe specifies the flour in ounces as well as in cups. If you have a food scale, put it to good use and measure your flour by weight rather than with measuring cups. It's so easy to pack the flour too tightly or too loosely and that can affect the amount of flour you put in by more than you'd think. It's still totally fine to use measuring cups, you just need to be attentive. A food scale is the fool proof way to get the right measurement.
  • When you beat the sugar, butter, and eggs, beat them at medium speed for a good 3 minutes or so until the batter lightens in color and appears fluffy. Doing this incorporates air into the batter and helps prevent the cookies from becoming dense.
  • If you don't have dark chocolate to cut into chunks, just use semi-sweet chocolate chips. That's what I used today and the cookies turned out just great.
  • Make sure you really do let the toasted coconut cool before you add it to the cookie batter. If you add it while it's still hot, it'll melt the butter in the cookie batter and affect the consistency of the cookies when they bake.
  • To put the cookies on the cookie sheet, I always use a mini ice cream scoop that holds about 1 1/2 tablespoons of batter. Using the scoop is super fast and the cookies will obviously be a little bigger (you'll yield about 1 1/2 dozen rather than 2 dozen).


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