Chocolate Bars: or, Making every recipe Mirro sent out

I didn't know I am a completionist.

Chocolate Bars ¾ cup shortening 1 cup sugar ¼ tsp salt 1 egg 2 tablespoons milk ½ teaspoon vanilla 2 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted 2 cups sifted cake flour Heat oven to 375°. Have ungreased cookie sheets, a thin metal spatula, and a cooling rack ready. Cream the shortening, sugar, and salt. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla. Beat to mix. Then add the chocolate, and beat until whipped and very light. Then sift in the flour. Add enough to make a soft dough- you may not use all of it. The dough should not be crumbly. Put into a cookie press fitted with the bar tip. Pipe long strips of dough across the baking sheet. Then use a knife to cut lines every 2 or 3 inches, depending on how big you want the cookies to be. (Since you're not pressing the dough onto the pan, you can do this on ungreased parchment paper.) Bake 8-10 minutes (mine were done in six). Keep in a tightly sealed container if you want them to stay crisp. They will go soft otherwise. NOTE: If desired, you can substitute six tablespoons of cocoa powder for the chocolate. Increase the shortening by two tablespoons. You will draw a lot more flavor out of the cocoa powder if you melt all of the shortening in the recipe, getting it very hot. Then whisk in the cocoa powder, and allow it to cool until it re-solidifies. Source: Mirro cookie press instruction sheet (undated, but it looks like the mid-1940s)

Today we are trying the only cookie press stencil that I haven't gotten out yet, and also the last recipe on the Mirro cookie press instruction sheet.

Mirro cookie press instruction sheet

 

I melted the shortening and added the cocoa powder so it could "bloom." Honestly, I can't believe it took me so long to learn about blooming cocoa powder. It's such a simple step, but it brings out so much more chocolate flavor than simply stirring the cocoa powder in with everything else. 

I didn't intend to let the chocolate-flavored shortening sit out overnight, but we had a really big dinner and no one wanted cookies afterward. And so, like letting your fresh herbs marinate overnight in the salad dressing, the cocoa spent all night exuding all its goodness into the fat.

The next day, we plunged the beaters into the shortening and prepared to beat it soft. I don't usually cream the shortening by itself before adding the next ingredients, but it usually isn't molded to the bottom of the bowl.

Readers will note that these cookies contain no leavener besides the air that you beat into them. And so, before adding the flour, I turned the mixer to its highest speed and let it run until the batter was beautifully whipped and utterly delicious.

I loved how easy these would theoretically be to squirt out. As I understood it, you don't even need to press these out one at a time. You just extrude long strips of dough on the pan and then break them up into cookies. In theory, I might even fit an entire batch onto a single pan! (Or two pans if I wasn't halving the recipe.)

At first, I tried piping out long cookie strips and then cutting them and spreading them apart. My first attempt at pushing out ribbons of cookie dough were wobbly and sad. I couldn't decide if I didn't like using the cookie press this way, or if I would get better with a little practice.

For the next batch, I tried putting short strips as the dough came out of the pan, which I could then cut in half before baking. That went a little better. They look like a mess on a pan, but at least they're a successful mess.

At this point, I realized that the dough was too crumbly. You might think I would have figured this out when I first tried to extrude the dough, but I thought it was supposed to be like that. I still don't know the correct dough texture for spritz cookies. It doesn't matter that I've now made literally every recipe that came with the cookie press. Maybe I will figure that out eventually.

For another batch, I tried cutting the dough off of the gun as it came out. About half of them looked so bad that I dropped them back in the mixing bowl. The remaining ones still didn't look all that great.

For my last batch, I decided to simply squirt strips that were as long as the pan, and then score them without moving them apart. In theory, I could break them up after baking. I know you're usually supposed to separate your cookies before they enter the oven, but sometimes I like to live dangerously. I should have made these cookies the "wrong" way the first time. They broke apart exactly where I cut them. Even those crackers with pre-scored lines don't separate so easily.

These cookies were really good on the first day. They were incredibly light, crisp without being hard, and with a perfect chocolate flavor that rivals the some really good brownies. But if you plan to make these ahead, you really need to store them airtight. Over the next day or so, they softened so much that they practically reverted to raw dough.