Baking Experiment: Success.

So, I wanted to bake Chocolate Stout Cupcakes from VCTOTW for about a month. But these past two weeks I wasn’t feeling very cupcakey. I was more in the mood for cookies. Good cookies that you can dip in your coffee, or your milk, or just eat as is. And really, Chocolate Stout Cookies sounded damn good. Doesn’t it? So I did what (nearly) anyone would do, turn to the internet and mighty Google and search for a recipe.

However, it seems, not many people appreciate the delicacy that a Chocolate Stout Cookie is. So there only one recipe out there that I could find: Double Chocolate Stout Cookies. It is a vegan recipe, it requires sourcing whole wheat pastry flour, and rice flour, and egg replacement. Too Much Work! I know I could just substitute and let go, but really, I just worked from this recipe and created these totally not vegan but absolutely delicious Chocolate Stout Cookies.

I assume people will want the recipe, so you can find it on the database here where you can also get it in a nice PDF format for printing. Since I know most are too lazy to go there, I’m gonna write it here as well.

Chocolate Stout Cookies

Ingredients:

• 200 gr all purpose flour
• 30 gr unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• pinch salt
• 1 egg
• 50 ml olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
• 50 gr brown sugar
• 50 gr white sugar
• 70 ml Stout beer, keep the rest cool and nice
• chocolate chips, optional

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 180 C / 350 F.
2. In a big bowl, mix stout, egg, oil and vanilla.
3. In a second bowl, sift flour and cocoa powder. Add sugars, salt and baking powder and mix well.
4. Add the dry ingredients to the wet in 3 or four times, stirring each time until flour mix is completely integrated.
5. Line a cookie sheet with baking paper. Gather dough with your hands, it should be soft and plyable, but barely sticky. Incorporate chocolate chips if using.
6. Take chestnut sized portions and form a ball with them. Place in cookie sheet, leaving enough space to flatten. Dip your fingers in cold water, remove excess so fingers remain moist, and flatten cookies.
7. Bake at 180 C / 350 F for 13 to 15 minutes. Meanwhile, drink the rest of your Stout. Take cookies out of oven, and let cool on rack.

Yield:
20 cookies, 5cm (or 2in) in diameter.

Notes:
Guinness is not vegan. In fact, it’s not vegetarian, speaking strictly. They use fish gelatine to clarify the beer. So if you care about this, even tho it’s the first Stout that comes to mind, please go out and find a vegan alternative.

Chocolate chips are not essential, the cookies pictured above have no chocolate chips. Feel free to add them tho. I’d use a good quality chocolate, not too sweet. About 1/4 cup sounds good.