It all started with a chocolate bunny. Okay, it all started with a tea date with my friend, Janine, who brought the dark chocolate bunny. No, wait it goes further back than that … it was just the chocolate bunny – a Purdy’s dark ‘Hopkins’ – that triggered it all. Some time in 1995 – I told you we were going WAY back – we got ’email’ through the University. I place the word email in quotes because I am not sure that it was actually email, maybe it was just some sort of messaging system that connected Canadian or other Universities? Anyway, an old friend, Richard, and I some how connected through this system, and he sent me a cookie recipe – yes, my reputation for baking cookies was firmly cemented even then. The recipe had some story attached to it that I have mostly forgotten, something about a woman eating these cookies at Neiman Marcus and then getting charged $500 ($5000?) dollars for it, and the store refusing to reverse the charge so the woman was now deliberately sharing the recipe with the entire world …
This story, even hastily sketched out here, sounds suspect, but the cookies sounded delicious. I wrote the recipe in my book and made the cookies … looking at my notes, I omitted the nuts (as I always do) but didn’t change anything else back in 1995. Someone – I’m not sure that is my printing – has written the note, ‘good!’ in pencil (see below) beside the ingredients, so I guess they were good, but, ultimately, too time consuming for me to bake often.
Back to the bunny. Yes, the bunny made me want to make these cookies again, but of course, I can’t ever follow a recipe, so I modified it to taste.
First batch – tasting notes – hand rolled, baked for 12 minutes and allowed to cool on the rack for 10 minutes. They were a little too dry for my tastes, and maybe I didn’t use enough chocolate chunks? So:
Second batch – tasting notes – dropped by mounded tablespoons, baked for 10 minutes. Allowed to cool for 5 minutes. Better.
Third batch – chilled the dough for 24 hours. Ate fresh from the oven, dipped in milk – YUM!
Fourth batch – chilled another 24 hours (48 total). I do think these do get better with extra refrigeration.
So, all in all, this was a fun and tasty experiment. I’m about to dropped off the final batch to the neighbours across the street, as I need to get them out of the house. Did I mention the recipe yields DOZENS of cookies? Too many dozens!! These don’t rank in the top five of my all time favourites – they are still too much work – but they are super tasty and a good use of a chocolate bunny.
You can find a PDF of the recipe & notes here: shaved chocolate chunk cookies recipe, if you are at all interested.
