Bon Appetit’s Crisp Cocoa Pecan Cookies

Last fall I bought the foodie anthology Bon Appetit Desserts which was awesome enough but by purchasing the cookbook I also got a free subscription to Bon Appetit Magazine! I will tackling the massive book of desserts soon but was so excited about the magazine I just had to begin with these Crisp Cocoa Pecan Cookies.

Please note: I wish I had taken note of the total time it takes to make these before I began: five hours!!! So make the dough either a day ahead or early on in the day.

Whisk or sieve the dry ingredients together.

Stir melted butter together with brown sugar, granulated sugar, whole milk (I used cream), vanilla and light corn syrup.

Combine dry and wet ingredients.

Add pecans, cover and chill for at least four hours.

Measure two level tablespoons of dough and roll into a ball. I had to nuke the batter a little because it was so tough.

On a parchment-lined baking sheet spread dough to make a 3″ diameter disk. The recipe says you should repeat with the rest of the dough but make sure the cookies at 5″ apart which was a little overkill. These cookies do not spread a lot.

Position one rack in the top third and another rack in the bottom third of the oven. Bake cookies in a preheated 325F oven. Here is where I got confused: “Bake cookies 8 minutes; reverse sheets. Bake cookies until flat and beginning to darken around edges, about ten minutes.”

OK, reverse sheets? Does that mean I just spin the around? Aren’t the cookies on the bottom going to bake faster than the top because they are closer to the element?

Also, do these cookies require 18 minutes baking time, total??? That seemed like a long time. Or was I just supposed to bake them for an additional two minutes? I decided to go long and bake them for 18 minutes total with my eyes on them.

The first batch on the bottom rack were slightly burned on the bottom. Big surprise. You were supposed to take them out when they darkened around the edges but for me, that meant dark bottom cookies which I do not like. As a result, I seriously recommend being more patient and baking these cookies one sheet at a time in the middle of the oven.

You were supposed to melt chocolate chips and drizzle the melted chocolate over the cookies. I should have used a ziploc bag but the recipe did not specify so I tried the spoon method with varying results.

Kind of artistic-looking. If you like a very firm and crisp cookie, you will like these. Perfect for dunking into a hot beverage on a cold winter’s night!

I think these cookies would be absolutely perfect for making homemade ice cream sandwiches with! They are very strong and would hold up nicely to the ice cream.

Overall, I found the later half of the recipe very confusing and not well written which made making these cookies challenging. I personally prefer softer and gooey cookies but for a tough crisp cookie the ones that did not burn were pretty good.

For the crisp-cookie-lover, I give this recipe four out of five wooden spoons.