SSB – Week 9 – Bittersweet Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies
Gina DePalma has come through with yet another heavenly dolce.
The SlowTrav Sunday Slow Baker are at week 9 of our baking odessy through Dolce Italiano. This week was Marta’s turn and she selected the Buttersweet Chocolate and Hazelnut Cookies.
As usual, I began with the assembly of all ingredients. You will notice from this picture that there is one tiny addition. That’s because I find it very, very hard to resist adding heat to anything chocolate.
So, I made two batches of the cookies. One for me with the kick of cayenne pepper. And one that was totally faithful to Gina’s recipe for all the folks who are purists. I can tell the difference between the two batches because I dusted the spicy ones with powdered sugar, and didn’t dust the regular ones.
I also remembered that I had a bottle of my homemade chocolate hazelnut liqueur in the basement. Yummy!
Deborah-What a great idea adding the cayenne pepper! Were they your favorite? I never think to add the cayenne, but I used to make a cookie I loved that contained it and black pepper-Mexican Chocolate Icebox Cookies from Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Chocolate Desserts. And I remember a wonderful gelato I had in Italy last year(Rome, I believe) that was chocolate and hot pepper.
Deborah responds: Cindy Ruth, I’m just a sucker for the combination of chocolate and cayenne. I’d love the recipe for that icebox cookie if you can find it!
So which one did you like better? I sadly cannot eat chocolate anymore (migraines) but if I could I would love to try a chocolate/hot pepper combo. It sounds yummy.
Deborah responds: I took both to the store yesterday. The spicy ones disappeared first. No chocolate because of migraines? Not fair!
Love the idea of adding the kick of cayenne. I’ll remember that (if I get back into the baking groove).