with Suzanne Dunaway

Do I know anyone who is not a chocolate afficionado?  I don’t think so. 

My grandniece, Heidi, actually once had an email address of heidiloveschocolate (dot. whatever) and in that family, they are true connoiseurs, travelling first to Zurich on their European jaunts to visit Sprungli chocolate company for their larders back home in California.  My sister-in-law, Heidi’s grandmother, always brought a dark chocolate hazelnut bar to us when we met in Europe, and leave it to her to discover a moving wall of liquid Lindt, a smooth curtain of falling chocolate, in a shop in Antibes!

What on earth were we doing to miss that? Definitely worth a detour!

I love these crisps, and in keeping with my reverence for leftovers, I one day added a couple of spoons of polenta at the end of a package that was taking up space in the pantry, thus giving the crisps a lovely sandy texture that kept their integrity intact for dunking.

Use the best chocolate you can find, either Valrhona or Chocoladerfabriken Lindt& Sprüngli AG, now doing business as Lindt.

The Crisps

• 6 ounces soft butter
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar plus another 1/4 cup sugar to dip your flattening device (a small water glass) into
• 1/2 cup confectioner’s sugar (powdered sugar to some)
• 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup cornmeal/polenta
• 6 squares unsweetened dark chocolate, melted
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I use Lindt or Droste’s)
• 2 tablespoons corn meal
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
• 4 tablespoons heavy cream

Heat the oven to 350F.
In the bowl of a food processor, mix the butter and sugar until very light, then add all the rest of the ingredients and pulse until they are mixed. Remove the dough to a mixing bowl and if it is sticky at all, add a small bit of flour until it does not stick to your hands.  It will feel buttery.
Pinch off walnut-sized pieces, roll them into little balls with your palms and put them on a baking sheet, usually four across with spaces in between and 6 down. I get about 24 small cookies to a sheet.
With the slightly damp bottom of a small water glass, flatten one cookie, then dip the glass into granulated sugar and flatten all the balls to a scant thickness of 1/4-inch, dipping into the sugar each time.
Bake for about 15-18 minutes until the smell drives you mad.
Let cool on brown paper bags, cut open to make room for all the cookies.  This makes about 60 cookies, depending on size of balls you make. You can make them larger than a walnut or very tiny cookies, whatever you wish.

The trick:

Most cookie dough ingredients can be mixed up all together.  Skip the instructions on most cookie recipes and just mix everything very well until you have a nice buttery dough. Then form the balls.
Dipping your flattening device into granulated sugar is also an easy way to get sugar on top of each cookie as you flatten it, rather than dipping the balls into sugar and losing some of the sugar as you flatten them by having it go into the dough, and it is much faster.

These cookies take about 45 minutes.

I am sure you will acquire several new fans after passing these around…