Hunka Hunka Triple Chocolate Cookies

Hunka Hunka Triple Chocolate Cookies - made dough August 19, 2017, adapted from Modern Honey

This is one of those recipes where I wonder if I did something wrong because I couldn’t replicate how the cookies looked on Modern Honey, the original blog where the recipe came from. I followed the mixing directions exactly and that’s where I wonder if I shouldn’t have. The directions say to start with cold butter and cream the butter and sugar for 4 minutes. I started with cold butter and I creamed the butter and sugar for 4 minutes.

But I rarely ever cream ingredients that long for cookies. Cakes, yes, to aerate the batter. But I don’t want airy cookies, especially not chocolate ones. But the main reason I don’t normally cream butter that long is it softens and warms it up too much, even though I started with right-out-of-the-fridge cold butter. That’s because I use a KitchenAid stand mixer and it easily creams butter in a minute or less. Four minutes might be fine if you’re using a hand mixer since they’re not as powerful as a stand mixer. For a stand mixer, beating butter for four minutes turned out to be too long.

I could tell the butter had warmed up because the dough was soft when I finished mixing it. I had to chill it briefly before I could form it into thick discs. That’s not a good sign. And sure enough, when I baked it, it spread like a normal cookie instead of staying almost as thick as the disc I had shaped it in. The texture itself was okay, not too light or cakey but definitely not as densely fudgy as the pictures on Modern Honey’s blog had led me to hope.

I will have to try these again but next time, I won’t beat the butter and sugar for so long. A minute should do the trick. You only want to beat just long enough to get rid of obvious butter lumps. The rest will smooth out as you beat in the rest of the ingredients.

1 cup cold butter

1 3/4 cups granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder, measured then sifted
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup milk chocolate chips
1 cup white chocolate chips

1. Cream butter and sugar together for 4 minutes (I recommend 1-2 minutes). Add eggs, one at a time, mixing just until combined with each addition. Mix in vanilla.
2. Sift together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. Add to butter-sugar mixture in 3 additions, mixing until just combined. Do not overmix.
3. Fold in chocolate chips. If dough is soft, chill for 30 minutes to firm up before dividing into dough balls.
4. Portion dough into golf-ball size dough balls and flatten slightly into thick discs. Cover and chill or freeze for several hours or overnight.
5. Preheat oven to 360 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper. Arrange dough discs evenly and bake cookies for 10-14 minutes. Remove to wire cooling racks.