TWD: Midnight Crackles

Just as my blog celebrated its 3rd birthday last week, it's time to mark another special occasion today - the 3rd anniversary of Tuesdays with Dorie!   I've been baking with the group since April of 2008, and it's still crazy to me sometimes to think it's been over two and half years.  It thrills me to know that eventually I will have made just about every recipe in the book, and that all I have to do is scroll back through my blog posts to recall how I felt about each and every one of them (an eminently useful tool for someone with a memory as terrible as mine).  Many thanks to Laurie of Slush, who founded Tuesdays with Dorie back in January of 2008, and has kept the group running, even as membership climbed to levels she never imagined.

This week's recipe was midnight crackles, a dark, intensely chocolate cookie that was a cinch to whip up.  The biggest tip I'd offer this week - don't leave the dough in the fridge for too long before shaping the balls for baking.  Dorie recommends at least an hour or up to 3 days; I left mine in for several hours, and when I removed it from the fridge it was hard as a rock.  The thermostat is set at a fairly chilly 60 F in my house most of the winter, and at that temperature it took forever for the dough to warm up enough that I could form it into balls without injuring my hands.  Also, the cookies don't spread much in the oven so it's not necessary to leave much space between them on the baking sheets.   I made 1/2 recipe and wound up with about 27 cookies.



The very first recipe I ever posted on my site back in December of 2007 was these chocolate crinkle cookies.  To this day, it's the single most-requested recipe by Shane - anytime I throw out the question "What should I make today?" the response is always chocolate crinkle cookies :)  The recipes are similar enough that I wondered whether these crackles might dethrone the crinkle cookies...  Well, the answer was no (it's becoming more and more clear that the chocolate crinkles might never relinquish their top spot) but the crackles were still a big hit.  Shane ate most of ours in 2 days if that's any indication.  I liked them a lot too; they were dark and rich, the kind of cookie that screamed for a glass of milk on the side, in my opinion.

Laurie and Jules of Someone's in the Kitchen selected this week's recipe, which can be found on the Tuesdays with Dorie site here or on page 74 of Baking: From My Home to Yours.

{PS - I'm hosting a giveaway for a copy of Eric Ripert's new book Avec Eric!  You can enter here if you haven't already.}