This recipe for double chocolate Vietnamese coffee cookies comes from a brand new cook book by James Beard Award nominee, Jason Licker, entitled Baking With Licker: Home Baking With Asian Accents.
One of the things that drew me to the recipe – on top of the fact it contains 2 types of chocolate and strong coffee – was the way the recipe ingredients are all given in grams. So many American recipes use cups; what’s a cup of butter or a cup of peanut butter? It can be a messy and inaccurate method of measurement.
Saying that, the grams were also my downfall in the making of the cookies. I decided that 30 grams of egg coresponded to 3 eggs – so that’s how many I used. In fact, it’s one, medium-size egg!
That’s why, after chilling the cookie dough in the fridge for many an hour, there was no way I’d be able to roll 50g chunks (more like ‘blobs’) between my palms! Nevertheless, other than spreading a WHOLE lot on the baking sheet, they were absolutely delicious.
Vietnam is currently the largest producer of Robusta coffee and the second largest producer of coffee in the world. The coffee produced in the country is rich roast with chocolaty tones – so perfect for teaming with dark and white chocolate. If you can’t find it, full-bodied espresso beans will be a good swap; just set your coffee grinder to the finest setting.
- 65g/2⅓oz butter
- 100g/3½oz sugar
- 110g/3⅔oz dark brown sugar
- 50g/1¾oz egg (1 medium egg)
- 3g/½tsp bicarbonate of soda
- 2.5g/½tsp salt
- 40g cocoa powder
- 115g plain flour
- 5g Vietnamese coffee, ground into a fine powder (I used finely ground Espresso beans)
- 125g white chocolate
- In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, beat the butter, sugar and brown sugar for 10 minutes until the mixture is light and creamy. Every few minutes, use a spatula to scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure a uniform mixture
- Add the eggs into the butter and sugar mixture in three increments. Once again, scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure a uniform mixture
- Add the bicarbonate of soda,salt, cocoa powder, plain flour and Vietnamese coffee slowly, so that you gradually incorporate these dry ingredients until they are just combined into the mixture. Finally, scrape down the sides of the bowl to ensure a uniform mixture
- Mix in the white chocolate chips and then remove the cookie dough from the stand mixer. Place the dough in a medium-size bowl and chill for at least 4 hours or overnight
- Preheat the oven to 185ºC/365ºF/Gas mark 5
- When you are ready to bake, weigh out 50g chunks of dough and roll them into balls. Place them on a parchment paper-lined cookie sheet and make sure you leave some room for the cookies to spread out. Push the balls down with your palm evenly until they are half the original height of the balls
- Bake for 12-15 minutes. Half way through, turn the tray from back to front so they are evenly baked. You will know the cookies are done when the edges are set, but the centre is still soft
- Remove the cookies from the oven and either transfer to a wire rack or allow them to completely cool on the cookie sheet
