Organic Dark Chocolate Chip Cookies

This recipe makes about 50 cookies. You are welcome to increase or reduce this amount and use less or more ingredients accordingly. I am going to describe how I made the cookies using organic ingredients, even though original recipe did not call for them. I will also list vegetarian ingredient substitutes next to organic ones if you want to go all out.

The cookies are very easy to make and they can handle all kinds of modifications. It takes about 30-40 minutes to make them + one hour of dough chilling.

Ingredients:

• Organic unbleached all-purpose or bread flour (I recommend King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour) – 550g
• Baking soda – ½ teaspoon
• Organic or All-Natural Irish Cream Butter, softened – 440g (for vegetarian cookies use vegetable margarine, vegan butter, or coconut oil)
• A pinch of Himalayan salt
• Sugar (organic cane, coconut, date, or substitutes) – 300g
• Organic brown or maple sugar – 300g
• Organic egg – 1
• Organic egg yolk – 1
• Organic dark chocolate chips (whatever cocoa percentage is acceptable to you) – 460g
• Vanilla extract or paste – ½ teaspoon
• Organic pecans, chopped – 300g

I like preparing the oven and baking sheets right away, even if it has to wait for a bit, but in this case, since the cookies have to be chilled before baking, I suggest preheating the oven later. But you can most certainly get 4 baking sheets ready and lined up with parchment paper. Cook two sheets at a time and don’t overload the oven with all four. Your cookies will need some heat and air movement to achieve the best texture.

When you are ready to start, take a medium size bowl and combine flour, salt, and baking soda. Whisk the dry ingredients together until thoroughly blended. Set the bowl aside.

In another bowl, combine the softened butter or oil, or margarine, with both, the white and the brown sugars. Beat the mixture by hand-held tool or use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. The mixture should be creamy, but not overly done. If you mix it too much, it will add some air into the dough and as a result the cookies will not come out crunchy and soft as they should.

Add the egg, an additional yolk, and vanilla extract into the butter and sugar mixture. Continue stirring or mixing gently for a few minutes.

Then add the dry flour mixture and whisk continuously or use stand mixer on low speed to ovoid overmixing. I used stand mixer and did not have a problem with mixing too much, but I made sure I was watching the dough all the time.

Final step in dough’s preparation is to add pecans and chocolate chips. Once those are poured in, continue combining everything by hand to make sure the mass is smooth. I did that for about 15 seconds.

Then I took my prepared in advance baking sheets and scooped about a spoonful of dough onto the baking sheet. I did that 50 times and covered all four sheets. I recommend leaving about 1” to 1/2” spaces between the cookies.

After you are done will all the dough, place the trays or sheets somewhere cold for about an hour. Now it’s a perfect time to preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Baking time varies oven to oven. I baked for about 14 minutes and started checking on them after 12. The cookies are not going to become brown, you will see just a bit of light brown color around the edges and on the bottom. This is when it’s time to get them out and leave them on the sheet to cool off properly. When you take them out, they will be quite soft, but will harden as they cool off.

Enjoy the cookies right away or keep them in an air-tight container for up to five days.

You are welcome!