Triple Chocolate Chip - Chocolate Almond Cookies

Every morning I run on the treadmill and while I'm sweating and panting and cursing my fat thighs I watch cooking shows. Go figure. The other day I watched an Ina Garten - Barefoot Contessa episode entitled Baking Basics. She baked some soda bread and some savory palmiers, but then Kathleen King, of Tate's Bake Shop, came on and together they baked Double Chocolate Almond Cookies. Oh-la-la. As soon as the treadmill timer hit 30 minutes I hopped off that torture device and started yanking ingredients out of the pantry. (No wonder I can't lose any weight, I get off the treadmill and bake cookies!)


But before I actually started to bake I pulled up the recipe on the Food Network web site and read all the reviews. Yes, all of them. Most people LOVED the cookies, but a few complained that the dough was dry and the finished cookies were crumbly. One reviewer suggested adding another egg to the recipe, and another suggested reducing the amount of flour.

I took all the comments to heart and adjusted Kathleen King's recipe slightly. My final cookies were wonderful. Everyone agreed that they were the best chocolate-chocolate chip cookies ever. Thank you Kathleen and Ina, this has become my new Go-To chocolate-chocolate chip cookie recipe.




Triple Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Almond Cookies
Adapted from Kathleen King's Double Chocolate Almond Cookies

Ingredients

• 2 -1/3 cups all-purpose flour
( IMPORTANT, sift the flour and then measure, if you don't sift you will use too much flour and the cookies will be dry)
• 3/4 cup Dutch-processed cocoa powder
(I used Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa, it give the cookie dough a pitch black color)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
(Kathleen's recipe called for 3/4 tsp, but I used unsalted butter so I upped this a little)
• 1 -1/4 cups (2 -1/2 sticks) UNSALTED butter, softened to room temperature
(Kathleen used salted butter, but I only had unsalted butter in the house. I upped the amount of salt accordingly.)
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup firmly packed dark or light brown sugar
• 2 large eggs
( I added another egg to combat cookie dough dryness)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 cup white chocolate chips
• 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup milk chocolate chips
(I decreased the volume of semisweet chips and added some milk chocolate. I think the lighter color of the milk chocolate really stands out against the dark cookie dough)
• 1 cup almonds, toasted and chopped


Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

In the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and sugars. Add the eggs one at a time mixing until the yolk disappear. Add the vanilla and mix until incorporated.

Add the flour mixture and continue mixing on low just until combined.

Add the chocolates and almonds and using a spatula mix until combined.

Using a small ice cream scoop (2 Tablespoon size), drop the dough two inches apart on sheet pans lined with parchment. Note: the cookies don't flatten or spread very much so if you like flatter cookies press the ball of cookie dough down with moist finger tips.

Bake for 12-15 minutes. (My convection oven runs hot, so I only baked my cookies for 12 minutes. The outsides were crispy and the insides were soft and chewy.)

Cool the cookies on the cookie sheets. The cookies should be very soft when they are removed from the oven. They will firm up as they cool.