Friday, December 25, 2020

Recipe: Chocolate Chip Rumchata Cookies

 


I made this recipe because I had a large bottle of Rumchata, and after realizing each shot (i.e. about one fluid ounce) has 140 calories, I figured I shouldn't make drinking it a habit. Instead, I'd made cookies with it, which I already knew would be loaded with calories!

I found this recipe on the Savory Simple blog; it was one of the few Rumchata recipes I could actually find. Let me tell you: these cookies were a PAIN to make. But we'll get to that after you've read the recipe (I hate how most blog posts make you scroll forever to finally get to the information you really want!). 

Ingredients

  •          16 ounces all-purpose flour (approx. 3.5 cups, but please use scale)
  •          1 tsp. baking powder
  •          1.5 tsp. kosher salt
  •          2 tsp. ground cinnamon
  •          11 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature
  •          12 ounces granulated sugar (1.75 cups)
  •          2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
  •          2 large eggs
  •          ½ cup + 2 tbl. Rumchata liquor
  •          6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped coarsely

Instructions

1. Line two (2) baking sheets with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 350° F.

2. Sift the flour, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon together.

3. In a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugar on high speed until light and fluffy. Add the vanilla, then turn the speed to low. Add the eggs one at a time, followed by the Rumchata. Then slowly add the flour mixture. Add the bittersweet chocolate last, mixing until just combined.

4. Use a 2-tablespoon scoop to portion out the cookies onto the prepared baking sheets. Chill for 15 minutes, then bake for 10-13 minutes, or until they look just slightly underdone (they’ll set as they cool). Allow to cool for 5 minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to finish cooling.

Now before I get into how annoying these cookies were to make, I should say that I was not cooking in my regular kitchen. My parents and I were at their condo on Hilton Head Island, so I wasn't equipped like I normally would be. I had neither parchment paper nor a stand mixer. I used a silicone mat on one cookie sheet, but since I only had one, I used PAM on the other. I also discovered in baking these cookies that the oven temperature is inaccurate, which means the cookies didn't bake as fast because this oven wasn't really 350°.*

So the odds were stacked against me is all I'm saying. Then the steps and other information in this recipe were ridiculous, too. First of all, for measuring out the flour, who the hell uses a food scale, other than those on a serious diet or the contestants on the Great British Baking Show? And why are these ingredients listed in ounces? I had to Google how many sticks of butter equals 11 ounces (it's 2.75 sticks, in case you were wondering). This recipe also assumes you have fancy baking scoops to portion out the cookies (I used an overflowing tablespoon, which ended up being way too big.). AND chilling the dough? Come on! Who has time for that! Then I'm stuck waiting for the dough to chill, scooping it on the sheets, putting it back in the fridge, and repeating the process as the cookies came out of the oven. Ugh. 

AND because of the low-temp oven, these cookies took a long time to bake. The recipe says 10-13 minutes, and in the full blog post, the Savory Simple author claims that at 13 minutes the cookies are at the crunchy stage. Bullshit. At 13 minutes my cookies were still doughy in the center and falling apart as I tried to get a spatula under them to transfer them to the wire rack. 15 minutes worked if I only had six cookies on a sheet. But with ~12 cookies on the sheet, even 20 minutes was barely enough to get some color on these cookies. 

Now I will say, after all this belly-aching, that the cookies taste amazing. I used milk chocolate chips (that my mom got for free from Target with her online order. Now that's customer service!), so the cookies were even sweeter. They really do have the Rumchata flavor, so if you like this liquor, you'll definitely enjoy these cookies. They're like cinnamon-y chocolate chip cookies. And since I think regular chocolate chip cookies are boring, I certainly prefer these! But I'll probably never make them again. I'll just enjoy them at the end of 2020...

*After I baked these cookies, my mom baked some oatmeal cookies with a recipe that said to bake them for 10 minutes at 350°. Hers ended up looking quite brown and overdone. So now I'm thinking this oven is on the fritz...

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