Chocolate-on-chocolate revisited

My love affair with chocolate goes way back, but it has evolved over the years from the snack sized Crunch bars you get at Halloween (heavily influenced by Shaq's early endorsement of said candy), to the purest, darkest artisan chocolate bars I can get my grubby little hands on. 

My current favorite is the Costa Rica 70% from Dandelion Chocolate. Its toasty at first, and then gradually becomes tangy, almost citrus-like, all with a super rich chocolate base. If you ask me, it's pretty amazing that so many flavors can be extracted from a bean! If you like chocolate, even just a little bit, I highly recommend Dandelion. Hurray for supporting local businesses!

So, along with my growing chocolate obsession, my quest for the perfect chocolate-on-chocolate continues. My last attempt at C-on-C cookies was super chocolatey, but the texture left something to be desired. This time around, I got closer to perfection.

When I first took these out of the oven, they were so soft that I thought they might break if I tried to pick them up. But after I let them cool for a bit, they became cookie-chewy, which is just to say that they break easily and melt in your mouth, but don't crumble when you try to move them. One thing I really liked about this recipe is that the batter includes melted chocolate, not just cocoa powder, which gave the dough some extra chocolate depth.

As far as distribution, this batch worked double duty -- I brought them to a potluck and also gave them to a friend for her birthday. But perhaps even more interesting, I  recently discovered that leaving chocolate chip cookie dough in the fridge for a couple of days before baking improves the cookie texture immeasurably -- it gives the flour time to soak up the liquids, so you get insanely tender, flavorful cookies. I've been wanting to try it with other cookies, so when I made these last week, I wrapped some extra dough in parchment and stuck it in the fridge. I pulled out the dough today and baked up the remaining three cookies. Verdict: AMAZING.

Here's the recipe, which I found on Lovin From the Oven:

INGREDIENTS

2 2/3 cups (16 oz) semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (I used Hershey's dark)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, slightly softened
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cold egg
2 teaspoon vanilla

DIRECTIONS

Heat oven to 325 degrees.

Melt 2/3 cup of the chocolate chips in the microwave by heating in increments of 30 seconds and stirring in between. Set aside.

Cream together the butter and both sugars. Stir in the melted chocolate chips. Add in the egg and vanilla.

Add the dry ingredients (flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt) to the chocolate mixture until just incorporated.

Fold in the remaining 2 cups chocolate chips.

Scoop tablespoon sized dough onto baking sheets.

Bake for about 11 minutes. Let cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack.