Chocolarge Cookies

Jumbo Dairy-Free Choc-chip Cookies












This week's bake is evidence of the fact that my choc-chip cravings were not purged by last week's dessert. Apparently decadent layers of cookie and mousse were not enough for my brain and I wanted, no I needed, more. I had to go bigger and better; enter the Chocolarge biscuits.

How to put this delicately?
Can't.
These biscuits are not delicate.

They are large. Jumbo sized in fact. They are nobly, with dark chocolate bits springing from every crevasse and crease. They take up an entire side plate, a whole palm and simply cannot be popped into your mouth in one bite. That is why I am nominating them for the circus under the iconic big top. Why the circus? Because these biscuits are the David Cookiefields...I mean Copperfields...of the biscuit world. They are Grande Illusion Masters with an epic, show-stopping vanishing act. How do these large, chunky cookies disappear before your very eyes you ask? Put a plate full of them on your table and find out for yourself! I am also going to let you in on the secret behind this magic trick. I am aware that I am breaking some sacred magician code, so all I ask is that you lean in close so that I can whisper it to you...a little bit closer...little closer...okay you ready?

Magician Secret #101 Exposed: Maple syrup!

This addition takes the humble chocolate chip cookie to an addictive place. Despite one cookie being four times the normal size of an average biscuit you simply wont be able to stop at one. Oh, you will try and you will even invoke the ol' sweet-tooth mantra: "I'm just breaking off a piece of that second biscuit. Okay just a little more. Now I have to even it up. Well it is practically gone and I never start something that I don't finish, because I am no quitter. Oh dear, it is gone!"

FYI: The irony of putting these over sized chocolarge cookies into a dainty French biscuit tin is not lost on me. No doubt, the French would be horrified by their ginormous size as their food motto is "Food is to be enjoyed; in tiny portions".
To that end, I dare them to try stop at just one tiny nibble, it is simply not possible. My dream is that these biscuits will revolutionize their food motto:"J'adore le Chocogrande, must have a-mour!"

Chocolarge Cookies:

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 1/2 cups self raising flour
185g margarine, melted and cooled
1 egg beaten lightly
1 egg yolk beaten lightly
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 teaspoons maple syrup
230g dark chocolate roughly chopped

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Line 3 large oven trays with baking paper.
Mix the flours and sugars into a large bowl. Add the combined margarine, whole egg, egg yolk, vanilla and maple syrup and mix together with a wooden spoon until a soft dough forms. Stir through the chopped chocolate.

Using slightly dampened hands (this helps to handle the dough), roll 2 teaspoons of biscuit batter into balls. Be warned; this dough is very soft and sticky, so as part of the baking process you will be required to eat the cookie dough off your fingers  (I know it is a tough job, but someone has to do it!)

Place the cookie dough balls 6cm apart on the tray (they spread a lot!) and bake for 15 minutes.
Cool on racks, then place a pile on your kitchen table and watch your very own magic show take place! Abra-cookie- dabra!

Choc-chip Cookie Mousse

Layers of Chocolate Heaven

 Sometimes I get fixated on an a baking experiment and it will swirl around my head continuously until I force it into a mixing bowl and onto a serving plate. Times like this are often characterized by strange hallucinations and general odd behaviour. This was one of those times.

For weeks I would walk down the street and the people passing by appeared to be giant cookies wearing chocolate mousse hats.

When my friends would ask, "How is your day going?"
I would smile and respond, "Yeh choc-chip and you? Oh, look at the time, I mousse be running, good to see you!"
My teaching of Romeo and Juliet would have had Shakespeare rolling in his grave with blasphemous utterings of  "A choc-chip cookie by any other name, would taste as sweet".

It was time to purge the fixation and bring the brain bake to life. For many years I have baked a dairy-free chocolate mousse as my "life raft" solution to no dairy after meat. However, this life raft was in need of some new air being pumped into it. You know those days when you pull into your street and you have no idea how you got there and you vaguely remember getting in the car, putting in the keys and pointing it towards home? Well my mousse had become this drive home, so routine that sometimes I would sit down in front of it and have no memory of painstakingly separating the millions of eggs and beating the sugar for millions of minutes. I decided that my dairy-free choc-chip biscuits were the answer to my pondering and I let it mull a while in my brain. That mulling turned to fixation and that fixation turned to desperate action. Layers of biscuit and mousse encased in individual dessert servings!

The result was a refreshing face lift. My tired old chocolate mousse got a much needed nip and tuck (shhhh...don't tell anyone. It hasn't had any work done, it just feels rested and rejuvenated!) The only saggyness in these delightful mousses, is that caused by me trying to takes its photo with the heater on full blast (think: wicked witch of the west from The Wizard of Oz crying out "I'm meltinggggg, meltingggg!")

Choc-chip cookies:

2 cups flour (sifted)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup brown soft sugar
5ml vanilla essence
250g dark chocolate bits
250g margarine
2 eggs
5ml bicarb of soda

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Cream together the margarine and sugars until pale and fluffy. Add the two eggs and essence into the mixer. Gradually add the sifted dry ingredients, mixing well between additions. Remove the bowl from the mixer and add the chocolate  morsels folding through by hand.

Place teaspoonfuls of the cookie dough onto a lined baking tray. The biscuits spread ever so slightly so when dropping them down onto the tray, aim for them to be roughly the size of the muffin tray bases that will be used to assemble the mousse. Bake 12-14 minutes until lightly browned and firm. As you remove the biscuits from the oven use the back of a spoon to gently flatten the biscuits, as this will help when assembling the individual mousses. Cool on wire rack. While the biscuits are cooling move onto making the mousse mixture.

Chocolate mousse:

7 eggs separated
1 cup caster sugar
200g dark cooking chocolate (dairy free) 
125g margarine
2 tsp vanilla essence 

Separate the eggs placing the whites in one large bowl and the yolk in a second slightly larger bowl. Using a hand mixer beat the egg whites first gradually adding 1/4 cup of the caster sugar. Keep beating until it forms stiff white peaks. Before you beat the egg yolks use the microwave or a double boiler to gently melt the chocolate. Quickly beat the remaining caster sugar (3/4 cups) with the yolks and essence until a pale yellow in colour. Add the margarine into the warm chocolate, stirring it through. The heat of the chocolate will melt the margarine, but may require a little bit of additional heat if the chocolate has cooled too much. Fold the chocolate margarine mix into the egg yolks ensuring that the chocolate is evenly mixed through the batter. Then fold through the egg white being careful not to beat the air out of them. This is best done by using a spatula rather than a spoon, creating wide arcs that aim to lift the chocolate yolk mixture over the egg whites rather than cutting through. Once incorporated you can begin to assemble the mousses.

I used a jumbo muffin tray (one size down from a texas muffin tray) and lined them with patty cases (I did trial one mousse with no case and it works really well so long as you run a knife around the edges before trying to pop them out of the tray). In each patty case place one biscuit on the bottom, then fill the case half way up with mousse. Gently place another biscuit on top and then pour more mousse on top until the case is filled to the top. You will be able to make 12 large individual mousses from this recipe, with some additional mousse left over (I just froze the remaining mousse in shot glasses for snacks at our leisure!)

Cover the trays with foil and place into the freezer. I like to prepare these around 2 days before I want to serve them because I like the mousse to set quite firm, however, they would be ready to eat 24 hours after making them.

Serve them straight from the freezer with some extra choc-chip cookies crushed on top for an indulgent extra!