DISASTER BAKING #16: Chili-Cinnamon Chocolate Crinkles for the Heat of the Moment
Dear Disaster Bakers,
I overdid it this week. Tried too much. Tinkered too much. Worked too late. Launched a thousand ships. Sunk 997 of them, I think. And then I overwhipped the butter.
For the first time since I started this newsletter, I attempted a recipe over the weekend that just would not cooperate. A million missteps! Disappointment atop disappointment.
How bad was it? Well, last week federal prosecutors said in a court memo that former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort demonstrated a "brazen" and "hardened adherence" to his life of crime. Tax fraud! Bank fraud! Obstruction of justice! These cookies that I had tried to make for us? Paul Manaforts—recalcitrant, desperate, mediocre liars. But in a cookie. The gall.
(Don't be nervous. It all worked out, see evidence below.)
But back to the catastrophe. I had wanted to make a chocolate snickerdoodle—pliable and addictive. When I was a kid, Duane Reade used to sell ones just like that in an 8-pack. The sweetness was so particular. Not nuanced or "refined." Just pure solace, the kind we craved when we didn't know "better" or that in the future a Twitter account called @WomenForCohen would be a salient topic for the House Oversight Committee to discuss.
It didn't work. I overwhipped butter, coconut oil, and sugar, which made the batter loose and too aerated. I overestimated how far 44 grams of cocoa would go. The cookies look mottled and anemic. The first time I tried to bake them the dough spread so fast the entire pan turned into one solid tectonic cookie plate, the fault lines just visible. The second time I chilled the batter in the freezer for 20 minutes. A quick cold snap can help doughs retain a little uprightness, despite the heat. But like some witnesses in some federal probes, the cookies crumpled. Then the oil from the butter separated and leached out—a biblical flood of grease.
The cookies did not wreck a single democratic institution that we know of, so I suppose it could have been worse. But for 72 hours the cookies did threaten to ruin me. I like to believe I'm resilient and resourceful. One bad experiment (or four) later, and I'm flattened. For a profile that'll run on Glamour next week, I interviewed a woman I really do admire. Not a politician or an internet celeb. Just a person who's done a lot. When I wanted to know whether she was ever scared or whether she ever held a little back just to survive, she laughed. "I never learned how to fear." Imagine that.
With the cookies, I tried again. I baked a cheesecake. I watched the Oscars. I drank 17 cans of lime-flavored Spindrift. I loved! I lost! I wasted a lot of butter. But at some point I had to accept defeat. No foreign power coerced it.
So then I moved on. OK, a simple pleasure had eluded me! So what!
I decided to seek a truer rapture. Cookies with chili and cinnamon, wrapped up in two kinds of chocolate. Cookies that crackle under pressure, but don't collapse. Cookies that wrinkle up like foreheads nationwide did when Michael Cohen claimed in his bonkers appearance on Capitol Hill that Donald Trump once directed someone to bid $60,000 on a portrait of him—then reimbursed that person with funds from his own nonprofit foundation. Cookies that can survive 12 minutes in a 325F oven, the fact that Green Book won Best Picture, and at least one more Trump-Kim nuclear summit. What about a cookie that tastes less like 1998, more like 2019? Fired up. Intense. Ouch—that burns.
Mhmm.
Chili-Cinnamon Chocolate Crinkle Cookies
Servings: 22 cookies
Distractability: 3
Scratchpad: Two points to adhere to our rule that awards them to all recipes that combine melted butter and chocolate. One point for the double dunk in two kinds of sugar. Promise this step will keep both hands occupied and off Twitter for at least 8 minutes.
Notes: I tweaked a spectacular crinkle recipe from America's Test Kitchen to make these cookies. I used semisweet chocolate instead of bittersweet, because that's what I had, added a lotta, lotta spice, dialed back the sugar, and debated whether or not to include espresso powder, but then opted against it. For those concerned about heat, know that the spice level in these cookies is mild. More of a "Ooh, what's that?" than a "Who put sriracha in this dessert?" The cookies take a little less than an hour to make, start-to-finish. Queue up the latest RHOBH and forget Wikileaks. Let's turn our attention to Lisa Vanderpump conspiracies instead.
Ingredients:
Cookies
4 tablespoons (55 grams) unsalted butter
4 ounces (114 grams) semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate, chopped
1 cup (135 grams) all-purpose flour
1/2 cup (40 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 teaspoons chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup (213 grams) packed brown sugar
1/4 cup (50 grams) sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Coats
1/2 cup (100 grams) sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon chili powder
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/2 cup (55 grams) powdered sugar
To-Do List:
Preheat oven to 325F. Line two sheet pans with parchment paper.
Rest a bowl over a saucepan with water that's just at a simmer. Heat chocolate and butter in bowl until melted and smooth. Whisk to combine, then set aside to cool somewhat.
In another bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, chili, and cayenne.
Once chocolate mixture is cooled, whisk in both sugars, eggs, and vanilla.
Fold flour mixture into chocolate batter until no white streaks remain. At this point the batter will feel like molten, thick fudge and it'll be impossible to fathom how this will ever form actual cookies. As Robert Mueller might tell us, "Trust the process." Let dough chill in the fridge for 10 minutes.
In the meantime, combine granulated sugar, cinnamon, chili powder, and cayenne in one small bowl. Then pour powdered sugar into a separate bowl.
Once the dough has chilled and feels somewhat firmer, use a #40 cookie scoop or two heaped tablespoons to drop mounds of dough into first the granulated sugar (roll to coat) and then in the powdered sugar (ditto). Place cookies, which will now look like delectable snow balls, onto prepared sheets.
Bake cookies until more cracked than Don Jr.'s fragile ego, about 12 minutes. Let cookies cool on sheet for 10 minutes to set. These cookies are best fresh, but will still taste stellar for up to 72 hours.
Distractions, Diversions, Birkenstocks
You don't need me to attest that Olivia Colman delivered one of the lone worthwhile moments in the 2019 Oscars when she accepted her Best Actress statuette, but perhaps I should share the details behind her Uniqlo-meets-Ella Enchanted gown, avec pockets, which was of course Prada. What I would have done to own that organza cape for bat mitzvah season! It's unspeakable. (Also, Frances McDormand wore no makeup and custom mustard Valentino Birkenstocks to the event, and that's how she became our queen.)
The Gentlewoman chose the artist Cindy Sherman to front its latest issue. I intend to race out to Casa Magazines as soon as it's available stateside to procure each of the two versions it shot for her cover, which I will then frame and treasure forever.
I have ruined countless fried eggs in lackluster pans. No more! This week I bit the bullet on Great Jones, a new-ish line of cookware I've admired for months. I started with this cute nonstick skillet, which retails for a reasonable $45. Brunch is saved, thanks to Friend of DB Sierra Tishgart who co-founded the brand.
Also, here's an excellent profile on the New Yorker's Jane Mayer, who makes the Koch brothers quake, once fell asleep when she tried to watch an X-rated video, and did indeed rescue her dog from the clutches of an ex who'd dumped her for Laura Ingraham. What a goddess.
Fork Over That Dough
New data made public this week reveals that the federal Office of Refugee Resettlement received more than 4,500 reports that claimed sexual abuse and harassment of detained minors between 2015 and 2018. Most involved allegations that one child abused another, but almost 200 were complaints against staff at shelters.
This is such a horror, I don't even know where to start. For now it can't hurt to take a closer look at the work The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights does. The organization advocates for unaccompanied children (most of whom have little access to legal counsel) and operates nationwide, with offices in Chicago, Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and New York. Here's a bit more on what the people there do.
Oh, And
Yes, I did just finish an entire book about grammar. It's a sheer delight, and you might like it too.