Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts (27 page)

Crumble the cookies coarsely and place them in a food processor or a blender to make fine crumbs (or place them in a plastic bag and pound and roll them with a rolling pin); you should have 2 cups of crumbs. Place them in a mixing bowl. Melt the butter and stir it into the crumbs until thoroughly mixed.

Pour about two-thirds of the mixture into the prepared pan.

To form a thin layer of crumbs on the sides of the pan, tilt the pan at about a 45-degree angle and, with your fingertips, press a layer of the crumbs against the sides. Press from the bottom up toward the top of the pan and leave a rim of uncrumbed pan ¾ of an inch deep around the top. Rotate the pan gradually as you press on the crumbs. Then turn the pan upright on its bottom, pour in the remaining crumbs and, with your fingertips, distribute them evenly around the bottom of the pan. Then press them firmly to make a compact layer.

FILLING

12 ounces semisweet chocolate (2 cups morsels or 12 squares, coarsely chopped)

24 ounces (3 8-ounce packages) cream cheese, at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

⅛ teaspoon salt

1 cup granulated sugar

3 eggs (graded large or extra-large)

1 cup sour cream

Place the chocolate in the top of a small double boiler over hot water on low heat. Cover until partially
melted, then uncover and stir until completely melted and smooth. Remove from the hot water and set aside to cool slightly.

In the large bowl of an electric mixer, cream the cream cheese until it is very smooth. Add the vanilla, salt, and sugar and beat well, scraping the sides with a rubber spatula, until very smooth. Add the chocolate and beat to mix. Add the eggs one at a time, scraping the bowl with the spatula and beating until thoroughly blended after each addition. Add the sour cream and beat until smooth.

Pour the filling into the crumb crust (it will not quite reach the top of the crumbs) and rotate the pan briskly first in one direction, then in the other, to smooth the top. (It might also be necessary to smooth the top a bit with a spatula.)

Bake for 1 hour. (It will still seem quite soft.)

Let stand on a rack until completely cool. Cover the top of the pan with aluminum foil and refrigerate overnight.

The cheesecake may be removed from the pan just before serving or days before. With a firm, sharp, heavy knife, cut around the sides of the crust, pressing the knife blade firmly against the pan as you cut. Then release and remove the sides of the pan. Now use a firm (not flexible) metal spatula (either a wide one or a long narrow one): Insert the spatula gently and carefully under the crust and ease it around to release the cake completely from the bottom of the pan. The cake will be firm and strong and easy to transfer. If you are serving it within a day or two (the cake may be refrigerated a day or two before serving), place it on a large, flat dessert platter; if you are going to freeze it, place it on a large piece of plastic wrap and wrap airtight. Refrigerate or freeze. If you freeze the cake it should thaw completely, overnight in the refrigerator, before it is unwrapped. Serve it cold.

OPTIONAL
:
This cake is so dense that I like to serve a large bowl of soft whipped cream on the side. And a bowl of brandied cherries. Or fresh strawberries, raspberries, or drained, canned bing cherries. Or peeled and sliced kiwi fruit.

Or, if you prefer a more decorated presentation, the rim of the cake may be trimmed with whipped cream applied through a pastry bag fitted with a large star-shaped tube. Either make large rosettes touching one another, or C- or S-shaped patterns, also touching. And the border of whipped cream may be topped with chopped green pistachio nuts, Chocolate Shavings (see page 263), or with candied violets or rose petals (which should be put on just before serving—they may run into the cream if they stand).

To decorate the border, use 1 cup of cream, 2 tablespoons confectioners sugar, and a scant ½ teaspoon of vanilla extract. Whip until the cream holds a definite shape.

If you are going to serve a lot of people, serve the cream separately and use 3 cups of cream and three times the amount of sugar and vanilla. Whip only until the cream holds a soft shape. If you whip it ahead of time, refrigerate it, and then stir it with a wire whisk before serving.

This cake is very rich and should be served in small portions.

COOKIES

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Icebox Cookies

Rolled Cookies

Macaroons

Other Cookies

Brownies

Chocolate Chip Cookies

POSITIVELY-THE-ABSOLUTE BEST-CHOCOLATE-CHIP COOKIES

DOLLY’S CRISP TOFFEE BARS

RALPH’S COOKIES

RAISIN-DATE-NUT BARS WITH CHOCOLATE CHUNKS

PRUNE-OATMEAL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

CHOCOLATE CHIP WHEAT GERM COOKIES

CHOCOLATE CHIP HONEY COOKIES

CHOCOLATE CHIP WHOLE-WHEAT COOKIES

CHOCOLATE CHIP HEALTH-FOOD COOKIES

COLORADO COWBOY COOKIES

CHOCOLATE CHIP-COCONUT MACAROONS

Positively-the Absolute-Best-Chocolate-Chip Cookies

A
BOUT 55 3-INCH
C
OOKIES

There’s a battle raging across the country for the title of The Absolute Best Chocolate Chip Cookie. The whole country has suddenly gone chocolate-chip cookie crazy and everyone who makes them claims his is the most delicious.

It all started in 1930 when Ruth Wakefield and her husband Kenneth bought an old house on Route 18 in Whitman, Massachusetts. Originally it had been a toll house where the horses were changed on the way from Boston to New Bedford. The Wakefields thus named it Toll House and opened it as a restaurant and inn.

I have been told that there was a popular cookie at the time called Butter Drop-Do. Mrs. Wakefield decided to add some chopped chocolate to the recipe. She did not know that at that moment she was making history and creating a whole, new food industry. The story is that she thought the chocolate would melt and run throughout the cookies, and she was surprised when it stayed in chunks. Needless to say, they were delicious cookies and popular with the inn’s guests. Somehow a chocolate company heard about them and made a special bar of semisweet chocolate just for those cookies; it was scored into tiny sections and sold with a special utensil for separating the sections. And then the Nestlé Company manufactured semisweet morsels expressly for the Toll House® Cookies and also printed the original recipe for the cookies on the back of each package of morsels. That’s when it all started and it has been snowballing ever since.

Ruth Wakefield wrote a wonderful cookbook of all the recipes used at ToIl House
, Toll House Cook Book
(Little, Brown and Company, Boston, 1930). Unfortunately, the book is out of print now. But I have a copy. And although the recipe that is printed on each package of Nestlé’s Semi-Sweet Real Chocolate Morsels is very close to Mrs. Wakefield’s original (which incidentally is called Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies in the book), it is not exactly the same. Here is my version of the recipe in the book, and I, too, claim that this is The Absolute Best, positively.

In a revised edition of her book, Mrs. Wakefield says about these cookies: “People never seem to tire of them and they carry well, too. During the war we shipped thousands of dozens of them to boys and girls in service all over the world.”

8 ounces (2 sticks) sweet butter

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¾ cup granulated sugar

¾ cup light brown sugar, firmly packed

2 eggs (graded large or extra-large)

2¼ cups unsifted all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon hot water

8 ounces (2 generous cups) walnuts, cut or broken into medium-size pieces

12 ounces (2 cups) semisweet chocolate morsels

Adjust two racks to divide the oven into thirds and preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut aluminum foil to fit cookie sheets.

In the large bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter. Add the salt, vanilla, and both sugars and beat well. Add the eggs and beat well. On low speed add about half of the flour and, scraping the bowl with a rubber spatula, beat only until incorporated. In a small cup stir the baking soda into the hot water to dissolve it (see Note), then mix it into the dough. Add the remaining flour and beat only to mix.

Remove the bowl from the mixer and stir in the walnuts and the morsels.

Now although this dough can be, and usually is, simply dropped from a teaspoon, I think the cookies are much better if you roll the dough between your hands into balls. The cookies will have a more even shape and a more even color, and I think they taste better. Mrs. Wakefield refrigerated the dough overnight before rolling it into balls. But here’s how I do it. Spread out a large piece of wax paper on the counter next to the sink. Use a rounded teaspoonful of the dough for each cookie and place the mounds any which way on the wax paper. Then wet your hands with cold water, shake off excess water but do not dry your hands. Pick up a mound of dough and roll it between your wet hands into a smooth, round shape, then press it between your hands to flatten it evenly into a round shape about ½ inch thick and place it on the foil. (If you refrigerate the dough overnight it is not necessary to wet your hands; just roll a mound of dough between your hands, flatten it, and place it on the foil. And if you do not refrigerate the dough and do not roll it between your hands but simply drop it from a teaspoon, at least flatten the mounds by pressing them with the back of the bowl (of a wet teaspoon.) Place the flattened rounds of dough 2 inches apart on the foil.

Slide a cookie sheet under the foil and bake two sheets at a time, reversing the sheets top to bottom and front to back as necessary during baking to insure even browning. Bake for about 12 minutes or a little longer until the cookies are browned all over. (If you bake only one sheet at a time, bake it on the upper rack.) They must be crisp; do not underbake. Ruth Wakefield says, “They should be brown through, and crispy, not white and hard as I have sometimes seen them.” (Baking at a lower temperature for a longer time would make them white and hard.)

Let the cookies cool for a few seconds on the foil until they are firm enough to be moved. Then, with a wide metal spatula, transfer them to racks to cool.

Store airtight.

NOTE
:
This method of dissolving the baking soda before adding it is the way Mrs. Wakefield did it. Toll House, which is under different ownership now, still bakes the cookies but they sift the soda with the flour; and the recipe on the Nestlé morsels also sifts the soda with the flour. I do not know which method is better. I only know these are delicious this way (dissolved).

VARIATIONS
:
Cooks have varied the above recipe in just about every way possible. Some use whole-wheat flour for all or half of the flour, or less flour to make thinner cookies, or more flour to make thicker cookies. Or more sugar. Some add 2 cups of raisins or chopped dates, or coconut, either with or in place of the nuts. Some cooks add grated orange rind or chopped candied orange peel. Or chopped candied ginger. Or pumpkin seeds and/or wheat germ. Or 1 teaspoon cinnamon. Some add about 1 cup of peanut butter to the basic recipe and use peanuts in place of walnuts. (If you use salted peanuts, shake them vigorously in a large strainer to remove as much salt as possible; then use slightly less salt in the ingredients.) And a popular cookie that I have seen in many places across the country is what appears to be the basic recipe but it probably has more flour; it is formed into extra-large cookies that are 6 to 8 inches in diameter.

The quickest way of shaping and baking the dough is in a pan for bar cookies. Butter a 10½ × 15½ × 1-inch jelly-roll pan, spread the dough smoothly in the pan, bake in the middle of a 375-degree oven for 20 minutes. Cool in the pan. Use a small, sharp knife to cut into 35 squares and use a wide metal spatula to remove the cookies.

Dolly’s Crisp Toffee Bars

3
2
C
OOKIES

My friend Dolly (Mrs. Andy) Granatelli is a superb cook and hostess who says that asking her not to cook would be like asking her not to breathe. These cookies are one of her specialties, chocolate chip butter bars, extremely crisp and crunchy, chewy and buttery, quick and easy; they keep well, mail well, and everyone loves them.

½ pound (2 sticks) sweet butter

½ teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 cup light or dark brown sugar, firmly packed