*purchased at café next door to bakery:
Café Eleven
435 NE Rosa Parks Way – Portland
$2
It is no secret that I’m a fan of a double dark chocolate/triple chocolate/chocolate whopper/ooey gooey chocolate cookie. It has a variety of handles, this dark brown beauty, but it mainly boils down to this:
Deep chocolate dough (more chocolate and butter than flour – sometimes even no flour), with chunks or chips of even more chocolate throughout.
Regrettably, some bakers try to jazz it up with distracting and unsavory additions.
Example A: White chocolate chips, to which I say “no gracias, amigo.” This is a double dark deal breaker.
Example B: Walnuts. Why? Because when I eat a cookie I’d prefer my mouth not feel like I’ve just French kissed a belt sander. Know what I mean? (Okay, I realize most people don’t actually know what I mean. But those who do, TOTALLY do. What gives with walnuts? Ouch. Enough.)
Other missteps with the double/triple/chocolate whopper include:
1. Over-baking. I want it a little chewy and crisp on the edges but soft and doughy inside. Biscotti or “dunkers” need not apply.
2. Not using enough chocolate (and/or using poor quality chocolate). This seems a prevalent offense in the ubiquitous “chocolate crinkle” – most famous for its appearance on 9 out of 10 holiday cookie platters ever assembled since the beginning of time. Yes, I’ve certainly had a nice chocolate crinkle in my life, but even one of my favorite bakeries ever makes them all shitty. (Having suffered amnesia of this fact, I bought one last week. After taking one depressing bite, I set it aside and immediately returned to the counter to buy something worth a crap. (It was The ginger molasses, if you’re dying to know. Totally not at all chocolate, but a solid stand-by that never fails me.)
3. (Broken record alert): Not using enough salt. I’ve said it a hundred times and I’ll say it a thousand more: SALT! For the love of Christ, PLEASE USE IT!
Okay, so let me tell you what you need to know about today’s title cookie:
1. It commits NOT ONE of the above missteps. It is soft and it is very chocolatey. And, while there is no flourish of fancy pants sea salt on top (by no means the required mode of salt delivery in my book), the batter has clearly been salted (thank you so much, Serious Business). As a point of reference, this is pretty similar in taste and texture to the triple chocolate at Grand Central, but probably 2.5 time the size (at the same price).
I’m no cookie size queen, but ounce for ounce, that is some sweet double triple chocolate whopper value.