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white chocolate chunk cookies

i adapted my dark chocolate chip cookie recipe to make a white chocolate chunk cookie recipe this weekend. i’m not keen on macademia nuts so kept this simple & sweet but i do think a variation with pine nuts or hazelnuts would be terrific. don’t forget to sprinkle your baked cookies with a flaky sea salt at the end to cut the sweetness of the white chocolate. happy baking!

WHITE CHOCOLATE CHUNK COOKIES

makes 12-14 large cookies

ingredients

  • 1-1/4 cup All-Purpose (AP) Flour (150g)
  • 1/2 tsp Baking Soda
  • 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
  • 1/2 cup sugar (100g)
  • 1/2 cup light brown sugar (100g)
  • 1 stick unsalted butter (113g), room temperature
  • 1 large egg, room temperature
  • 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 2 cups white baking chocolate, mix of chopped bar pieces and chips
  • flaky sea salt for finishing

recipe

  1. preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit. grease baking sheets.
  2. mix dry ingredients together: salt, all-purpose flour, and baking soda.
  3. cream butter and both sugars together, very well. for reference, i creamed mine with a hand mixer for 5 minutes. no lumps! add vanilla extract and egg and mix to a homogeneous state.
  4. fold dry ingredients into wet and mix just until last streaks of flour disappear. then fold white chocolate chunks in with a spatula, just until all chunks are incorporated.
  5. spoon large rounds of batter (1 overflowing tablespoon) onto baking sheet, leaving 3 inches of space between cookies. freeze baking sheet for 30 minutes. (if baking later or prepping ahead of time, feel free to arrange spoonfuls side-by-side and store in the freezer for up to 2 months.)
  6. bake cookies for 7 minutes, turn baking sheet around, and bake for 7 more minutes. (baking time will vary if cookies are smaller). finish each cookie with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt and cool on a wire rack or immediately in the freezer for 5 minutes to stop baking.

post13 // dreaming of doughnuts: almond and sugar-crusted doughy goodness

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Donut con azúcar y almendras

For being someone with a colossal sweet tooth, the fact that doughnuts never appealed to me was interesting. At no time did I not like doughnuts, but the feeling that a better option existed always lingered in my mind whenever the doughnut was at question— a croissant, a danish, a bagel. In writing this post, I’ve forced myself to dig deep within my psyche and answer the why: why did I never choose doughnuts?

A couple of reasons pop to the front of my brain in an attempt to answer the above-mentioned question. Was it because doughnuts reminded me of those circular powder balls that left my clothes dirty in the church auditorium after mass every Sunday growing up? Was it because I never really liked all that flavorless dough inside the doughnut (I did enjoy the Boston Cream variety, where the dough is substituted for a creamy custard)? Or was it really that I have been scarred by my brother Robert’s horrific adolescent experience in which he consumed an entire box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts and then proceeded to vomit all over our beach house? I think I have hit the nail on its head.

Whatever the reason was, I never had much respect for the doughnut. In retrospect, like my post on rice pudding, I think this lack of desire grew out of a simple absence of good doughnuts. With the exception of a great Downyflake Doughnut tasting on Nantucket Island, Massachusetts—spear-headed by my mother, a doughnut lover herself having grown up eating homemade doughnuts made by her own mother—my doughnut experiences had been mediocre at best up until I smelled the fresh-cooking pieces of doughy goodness emanating from yet another hole-in-the-wall shop in La Paz. In a rush to get somewhere else, I vowed to make it back to the little dive.

I succeeded in returning and opted for an almond and sugar-crusted doughnut. The crumbly sugar and crushed almond dressing that covered the soft and sweet warm inside of the doughnut was just to die for. I could’ve eaten a whole box if I had wanted to! Yet, I didn’t want to end up like Robert so I just stuck with one. This very doughnut was not only the best I’d ever tasted, but one of the best pastries or morning snacks I’ve had. You know when you get to the bottom of a snack or meal and are just so sad that it’s all over? This doughnut left me with that yearning sensation alongside a daydream of doughnuts as I continued to explore La Paz.