Chewy Chocolate Cookies

Last week it was all cornbread all week long--someone else even made some and brought it into work! So this week, to counterbalance all that savory baked goods, I thought I'd make some thing really decadent and delicious. But healthy, of course, still healthy. When I saw this recipe in the Weight Watcher's 2005 cookbook, I knew I had to make them. There aren't a lot of ingredients, and most of them I have, and there is a HUGE amount of chocolate to everything else.

Ingredients: 

1/2 c light butter
1 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 cup sugar
1/2 c unsweetened cocoa
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup regular oats
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
dash salt




Chop the unsweetened chocolate into fine pieces and melt with the butter in the microwave for 30 seconds until the chocolate starts to melt. The butter melted quickly, and I had to stir a while to get the chocolate to melt. There seemed to be a lot of butter--next time I plan on reducing the amount of butter to see if that would work. There aren't a lot of ingredients, and there is as much butter as flour here! Anyways, into that I added the sugar and cocoa and stirred until smooth. I let it cool a little and then added the two eggs after lightly beating them.

I tossed the oats, flour, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl, before folding them into the chocolate mixture just until blended. Then they are dropped onto a greased cooking sheet by heaping teaspoonfuls. These are pretty small cookies, but they are SO chocolatey that you wouldn't want more. They do expand, so don't place them too close together.

They go into a pre-heated 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes until just done in the middle. One pan was underdone at 8 minutes, the other was just on. They need to stay on the pan for at least 5 minutes so they don't fall apart when you move them--though if you eat them from the pan it probably doesn't matter if it is in pieces.

The Verdict: 

This was a win for me, though my family members liked them quite a bit less (They wont say to my face that they don't like them, but one of them only ate half--I wish people would tell me what they really think, I'm not offended, I'm learning!). I love the chewy, chocolatey, dreamy quality. They are soft and cakey, not crispy, and so rich I don't worry about eating too many at once. They almost taste a little like brownies! I think the quality of the chocolate really matters here, so I may invest in some higher quality chocolate when I make them again.