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TBB - Double Chocolate Oriolos

Rose's Alpha Bakers

TBB - Double Chocolate Oriolos

Patricia @ ButterYum

Double Chocolate Oriolos - ButterYum

Welcome to the Alpha Bakers bake-a-long, an online project where a group of food bloggers bake our way through The Baking Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Most of the recipes made during this project will not be shared, but I will post my commentary followed by a full photo tutorial.

This week's selection - Double Chocolate Oriolos.   A sandy textured chocolate walnut cookie.

Special ingredients and/or equipment needed - half sheet pans, digital scale, dutch processed cocoa powder.

Optional ingredients and/or equipment suggested - silpat silicone liner, turbinado sugar (sugar in the raw).   

How do they taste - They're pretty good, but where's the "double"?  I only count one kind of chocolate in these cookies.     

How do they look - Pretty standard as far as chocolate cookies go.   

Level of difficulty - Easy.   

Were the directions clear - Yes.

What would I do differently next time - I'd love to try these with almonds or pistachios.  Also, I'd finish these cookies in clear sanding sugar, instead of sugar in the raw, to enhance their brown color.

Next up - Stilton Baby Blue Cheesecakes.  I really can't stand bleu cheese so I will not be making this recipe.  My next bake will be French Orange Cream Tart.

Okay, here's my photo tutorial. 

Mise en place

This recipe calls for English walnuts, but I think black walnuts taste amazing with chocolate so my plan was to make a half a batch with each.

Black walnuts on the left. English walnuts on the right. Toast the nuts in the oven to intensify their flavor.

After the nuts cool, remove any loosened bits of skin. If you want, you can go crazy getting every speck off the nuts, but I decided to just shake off the loose bits in a mesh colander. This technique makes less mess than rubbing the nuts with a towel.

See all the nut skin?

Time to begin making the dough.

In the bowl of a smallish food processor, combine the nuts, confectioners sugar, cocoa powder, and granulated sugar. Normally I would suggest sifting the confectioners sugar and cocoa powder to eliminate lumps, but it's really not necessary in this case because the blades of the processor will obliterate them.

Pulse until the nuts are finely ground.

The mixture should look like this when it's done.

Next add the cold butter and pulse until combined.

Remember when I said I planned to make two half batches? Well, I was quickly running out of daylight so I decided to combine both kinds of walnuts to make one whole batch. That meant the tiny food processor I was using was too small.

So I transferred everything to a medium sized food processor.

Then I added the flour and processed again. The dough is now done and is ready to be chilled.

Rose's directions say to wrap the dough in plastic wrap, then unwrap and place in a plastic bag. I just put everything in a bag to begin with. Time for the dough to go into the fridge to chill.

When it's time to bake, weigh out 12 gram balls of cookie dough.

Incidentally, a #60 scoop is exactly the right size.

Roll the dough into round balls.

Then squash the balls of dough a bit with a glass. Rose suggests spraying the glass with cooking spray, then dipping it into sugar before pressing the balls. I find it a little neater to wrap the glass with plastic wrap, then sprinkle the cookies with sugar.

Voila.

I also tried rolling the balls of dough directly in sugar. I love the crunchy texture large crystals of sugar give these cookies. I used Turbinado (sugar in the raw), but clear sanding sugar would work beautifully.

The sugar on top gets pressed into the dough so you might want to add a little more if you like that sort of thing.

We like that sort of thing.

IMPORTANT: Pop the cookies in the fridge for a few minutes before baking (I just put the whole tray right in there). This will prevent the cookie from spreading too much during baking.

Bake as directed, cool completely, and dig in.

Want some?

Oops, too late. Mmmm.

links for more alpha baker photo tutorials