Today on Sugar Spun Run, I'm going to be making brownie cookies.
Today we are going to be making brownie cookies,
which are exactly what they sound like,
basically brownies in cookie form.
And I love this because you get that nice edge
and that nice, chewy, fudgy center all in one bite—or in one cookie anyway.
Now since we're making brownies, of course, we need to start with chocolate.
You'll need eight ounces of chocolate. I recommend using baking bars
and not using chocolate chips for this recipe.
These are just going to work better. I recommend a dark chocolate,
this is sixty percent. Semi-sweet would work,
but, obviously, you're going to end up with sweeter cookies if you choose that route.
Now I'm going to finely chop this chocolate and I just use a large sharp knife,
sort of go over it in a mincing motion.
The finer it is, the faster it'll melt.
Okay, now I'm going to be melting this chocolate in the microwave,
so I'm going to grab myself a medium,
small-ish, microwave-safe bowl. Now you could do this step in a double boiler instead if you prefer.
Along with the chocolate you'll need one fourth cup of unsalted butter,
and I'm just going to cut this into eight-ish pieces.
I'm going to cut it into tablespoons and cut it again.
This is just going to help it melt a little bit more evenly.
Drop this in with our chocolate,
and I'll take this over to the microwave where I will heat it in about twenty
five second intervals, stirring well in between.
Anytime you're melting chocolate, you don't want to
heat it for a long period of time without stirring.
If you do that, you could run into an issue where you seize your chocolate
and it gets lumpy and just unusable.
Alright, once our chocolate is completely melted and smooth,
we are going to set this aside and grab a separate, medium to large sized mixing bowl.
Now to this bowl, we're going to add two thirds cup of granulated sugar, along
with one third cup of firmly packed, light brown sugar.
Now we're also going to be adding two large eggs.
Ideally, these should be room temperature, and I'm just going to crack them in a separate dish.
That way if I get any shell in there, I don't get it in my cookies.
We'll add these to our mixing bowl,
along with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and one fourth teaspoon of salt.
This is just regular table salt. Now for this recipe,
you're going to want to use an electric mixer.
You could absolutely do this in a stand mixer if you prefer,
you would want to use the whisk attachment, but today I am going to be using an electric hand mixer.
Now we're going to start just beating this slowly until everything is combined.
And once everything is combined, we're going to turn up the speed to high,
and we are going to beat this for a minimum of two minutes on high speed.
What we are looking for is for the mixture to have increased in size;
it pretty much doubles in size; it will be pale in color;
and that's when you can go on to the next step, but no sooner.
Now beating the eggs this much in this way,
does a couple things. For one, it's going to help give us those shiny,
crackly tops. And another thing that it's going to do is give the cookies some lift.
It's going to help them get that nice texture and structure.
So I'm very happy with how this looks.
So now I will grab my melted chocolate from earlier.
Give this a brief stir just in case it's begun to solidify any,
which mine has not. And now we're just going to drizzle this into our egg mixture,
starting with the spoon because I don't wanna leave any of that chocolate behind.
It's just like with butter, because we don't waste these things here.
Now, I'll drizzle this in.
And we'll stir this in until it's completely incorporated with the egg
mixture. I just do this with my mixer on low speed.
Alright, I'm just going to use my spatula to briefly scrape the sides
and bottom of the bowl to make sure everything really is well distributed.
Alright, this looks great,
so now we're going to add our dry ingredients, and I'm just going to be sifting these into the batter.
We'll start with one third cup of all purpose flour.
Add a fourth cup of natural cocoa powder.
Cocoa powder likes to be kinda lumpy, so that's one reason I like to sift everything.
We're also going to add one fourth teaspoon of baking powder.
Just sift everything in. We’ll get it nicely distributed while we're sifting it.
And then, see, cocoa powder, it—it's a little bit lumpy sometimes,
at least mine usually is, so we'll just break up those lumps.
It's a lot easier to do it here rather than to try to do it in the batter.
And I will gently fold everything together.
I do this part by hand. I don't use the mixer here. And we’ll stir until everything is completely combined.
It is a little bit dry at first, so just keep working everything together
until you have a nice, cohesive dough. Alright,
this is looking pretty good, but there is one last ingredient that I like to add.
It's optional, but, come on, you can never have too much chocolate.
So we're going to be adding a half cup of mini chocolate chips to the batter,
and we'll just stir these in.
Once those chips are nicely distributed,
we are going to need to chill the batter, which I hate having to pause to chill.
I wouldn't make you do it if it wasn't necessary.
So this dough is going to—we're going to cover it first,
and it'll chill for about twenty to thirty minutes.
So it's not too long, all things considered.
And I actually don't like to chill longer than thirty minutes
because then the dough can become difficult to scoop
and then the cookies don't spread as much as I like them too.
So I'll pop this in the fridge
and in the meantime, I like to get my oven preheating to three hundred and fifty degrees Fahrenheit.
Alright, once your dough has chilled and your oven has preheated,
we can start scooping our cookie dough.
Now I scoop these cookies a pretty decent size.
Now, I use my one and a half tablespoon size cookie scoop,
but I scoop closer to two tablespoons of dough,
maybe even a little bit more than that. Now the dough is going to be a little bit sticky still,
and I like to roll it between my palms because it's going to give me a smoother,
shinier, prettier cookie. You can skip step if you want,
just note that your—the surface of your cookies won't be as pretty if you just drop them instead.
Also, they won't be as round. And the longer you chill the dough the easier it is to roll,
this has only been twenty minutes because I’m ready to get these cookies in the oven.
It's a little bit less messy if you leave them in for thirty minutes.
And another note, if you chill the dough even longer than
that and you find it is super firm and difficult to scoop,
let it sit at room temperature until it is scoopable.
And then, do a test batch, and if your cookies really aren't spreading at all,
on the next batch of cookies, just lightly flatten them.
Alright, now we'll pop these in the center rack of our three hundred
and fifty degree Fahrenheit preheated oven
where they’re going to need to bake for about ten minutes.
Once the cookies are finished baking, you want to make sure you
let them cool completely on the baking sheet
because they're going to be super fragile while they're warm.
They need to cool completely, they'll finish baking,
and then you'll be able to pick them up without them falling apart.
So once your cookies have finished baking and cooling,
if you have any small minions in the house, they're probably going to surface at this point
becasue they’re gonna smell it.
Are you okay?
Okay, so we're gonna—we're gonna give them a taste in just a second.
Thank you guys so much for watching. Stay tuned if you wanna see the taste test,
and I'll see you next time.
Alright, guys.
You ready to taste test?
Cheers?
Cheers.
Mmm…what do you think?
Good. Is it good? Is that the best cookie you've ever had? Mhmm.
What do you think cookie monster?
Oh, yeah. This is a lot of sugar for you.