Chocolate Coma Cookies

We had such a wonderful 4th of July holiday, even with it being in the middle of the week.  In the morning we surfed by our house for a bit, then headed up to Oceanside to spend the afternoon with our good friend Greg, his friend Tom and Greg’s nephew and his nephew’s girlfriend.  It was a treat to be with old friends and to make new ones!  Every time I go to Greg’s I’m inspired to cook because of his amazing kitchen.  I brought a ton of food and cooked the afternoon away.  We had roasted tomato chipotle salsa, grilled some steaks and tandoori-marinated chicken, feasted on an orzo, tomato, corn and basil salad, nibbled slices of fresh melon, and finished the all-American gorge-fest with these beauties:

When we left the house in the morning, I said “Oh, I forgot – we have to stop on the way to Greg’s for 5 Heath bars”.  Never one to argue with an excess of sugar, Chris simply said “Okay, sounds great”!  Unfortunately, I had an audience while making these, so everyone got to see just what went into them.  I think that the process may be shocking to some, what with the full pound of chocolate and all.  Truly, these are most appropriate on a holiday, or when feeling extremely blue. 

Adapted from Epicurious:

Giant Chocolate-Toffee Cookies

1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 pound bittersweet (not unsweetened) chocolate, chopped
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) unsalted butter

1 3/4 cups (packed) brown sugar
4 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
5 1.4-ounce chocolate-covered English toffee bars (such as Heath), coarsely chopped

Yeah.  These are going to be pretty crazy – you can tell already.  The original recipe called for toasted chopped walnuts as well, but I thought that might be a bit excessive, and might detract from the toothachy chocolate extravaganza I was going for.

Stir chocolate and butter in top of double boiler set over simmering water until melted and smooth. Remove from over water and cool mixture to lukewarm.

Beat the sugar and eggs in a bowl until thick.  Beat in the chocolate mixture and vanilla. Stir in the flour, powder and salt, then the toffee. Chill batter until firm, about 45 minutes.

As the name implies, these can be made into huge cookes (1/4 cupfuls), or you can size them like normal cookies.  I went for normal, so there’d be more to go around.  Bake at 350°F on lined or greased baking sheets.  They’ll spread a bit, so space them about 2 inches apart.  Bake just until tops are dry and cracked but cookies are still soft to touch, about 15 minutes. Cool on sheets. 

Decadent, rich, heavenly, evil – pick your descriptor, but would you pass me another?  Let’s go in for the closeup:

Yowza. 

We finished off the day by paddling our boards out by the Ocean Beach pier, where fireworks blasted off right overhead as we bobbed in the water with scores of our neighbors.  That’s got to be enough to work off all these cookies, right?  …um, right?