Chocolate Wafers: or, It's a good day

Sometimes I revisit a recipe and think "Whyever did I stop making these?"

Chocolate Wafers     Oven temperature: 400° ¼ cup (½ stick) butter ½ cup sugar ¾ tsp baking powder ¼ tsp baking soda Pinch of salt† 2 oz unsweetened chocolate, melted* 1 tsp vanilla 1½ tsp light cream or milk 1 large egg 1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sifted flour Cream the butter, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Add the melted chocolate, and mix well. Then add the vanilla, cream or milk, and the egg. Beat well. Add the flour and beat only until it is mixed. Pat the dough onto the edges of the bowl so cold air can circulate through it better, then refrigerate for about 30 minutes, or until it is firm enough to work with, but not hard enough to crack. When ready to bake, heat oven to 400°. Have baking sheets lined with parchment paper or greased foil. Place the dough onto a well-floured surface, and sprinkle more flour on top. Roll the dough out about ⅛ thin (it will handle better than you think). Cut it out with the cookie cutter(s) of your choice, and place them about a half-inch apart on the pans. You may want to use a spatula to lift the cookies off the countertop and onto the pans. Bake 7-8 minutes, or until they feel almost firm to the touch. If you want to speed this up, you can forget all this business with a refrigerator and a rolling pin. Instead, roll the dough into small balls in your hand (don't bother chilling it first). Then roll them in sugar. Place them on a greased or lined cookie sheet 2 or 3 inches apart. Then flatten them by pressing with your finger or the random drinking glass (or whatever) of your choice. These cookies are very rich, so you should make them small. Bake until barely darkened at the edges. *If desired, you can substitute 6 tablespoons of cocoa powder. Add an extra 2 tablespoons of butter to the amount already in the recipe. If you want to get a better chocolate flavor out of the cocoa powder, melt the all of butter in the recipe and get it quite hot. Then whisk in the cocoa powder, and leave it to sit until it re-solidifies. (If any water separates out of the butter, just put it into the mixing bowl with everything else and forget about it.)   †Omit if butter is salted. Source: Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1974

Maida Heatter's Book of Great Chocolate Desserts, 1974

 

I used to make these cookies all the time. After all, why take up exercise if you're still going to sacrifice chocolate?

Just as I so fondly remembered, the cookie dough was a beautiful rich dark brown. Before adding the flour, it looked tantalizingly like brownie batter.

Maida Heatter directs us to roll out the dough one-eighth of an inch (that's 3-ish millimeters) and then use a cookie cutter. This, naturally, will produce the chocolate wafers promised in the recipe title. But back when I semi-routinely made this recipe, I never had the patience for a rolling pin and cookie cutter. (Chocolate is too hard to wait for.) Instead, I used to roll the dough into small balls, roll each one in sugar, and press my finger across them like so:

Today, I decided to also play with my new cookie squirt gun. It may be cheaply made, but it has held up through multiple batches of cookies so far. Most of the stencil shapes come out exactly how they look like they would. Others were a surprise. Who would expect this peculiar shape to produce perfect hearts?

Well, I say "perfect," but we had a lot of misshapen cookies that I plopped back into the mixing bowl. Also, I cannot recommend making chocolate wreaths because they look like... um.... Well, see for yourself.

For the sake of thoroughness, I decided to make thin wafers like Maida Heatter told us to. I've made this recipe a million times, so I figured that I ought to follow the second half of the directions at least once. When I saw how thin the dough is supposed to get, I feared the it would be like wet toilet paper (the cheap kind). But it handled surprisingly well. In fact, I think it would be easier to make a pie crust out of it than the graham cracker dough.

My only (self-inflicted) problem was that I was parsimonious with the flour that I scattered onto the countertop. This led to my cookies sticking to the surface. Had I not made such an avoidable mistake, these cookies would have been a cinch to work with. Also, I have to note that you get a lot of cookies when you make them this thin. I got two panfuls out of a tiny lump of dough.

As the cookies baked, the ones I rolled into balls puffed up and took on a very cute crackly look. As I said, this isn't the official way to shape these cookies, but it's my favorite.

You can tell why Maida Heatter decided to make wafer-thin cookies out of this dough when you eat one. These cookies are really rich, and you get sated quick. So unless you need a lot of therapeutic chocolate, you might make them a little smaller than I did. With that said, they're really good, really easy, and definitely worth making.

Also, for those who still mourn the loss of Famous Wafers, this recipe is exactly what you need.