Foraged Eatery and its Chocolate Chip Cookies

April 30, 2020 JMORE Staff

(Photo created by freepik - freepik.com)

Chef Chris Amendola of foraged eatery, a self-described “hyper-seasonal eatery” in Hampden, shares his special chocolate chip cookie recipe.

Foraged. Eatery Chocolate Chip Cookies

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Course Dessert

Ingredients

1/2 pound soft butter
2 1/2 cups Mirgash Farms soft winter wheat berry flour source: https://www.migrashfarm.com/store/p26/Soft_Red_Wheat_No._60.html
2 cups Nela, Panela sugar source: https://nelanature.com/
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
3 Tablespoons vanilla extract
2 cups Cocoa Compassion chocolate chunks or your favorite chocolate chips or bar broken down into chunks (source: https://www.cocoacompassion.com/)
Your favorite finishing salt i.e.; Fleur de sel, Maldon

Instructions

Mixing

In one mixing bowl, mix together the flour, salt and baking soda and set aside.
Crack eggs into another bowl and set aside.
Using a stand mixer, put butter, sugar and vanilla extract in the mixing bowl and cream the sugar and butter together on medium speed, making sure you do not over cream this. This should take about 1 to 2 minutes depending on how soft your butter is.
Once the mixture is fully creamed, turn off the mixer and add one of the two eggs, turn back on to medium speed and mix until the egg is fully mixed in.
Turn the mixer off and add half of the flour mix, slowly turn your mixer back on starting slow so you do not send flour everywhere. Mix until all flour has been mixed in. Turn off the mixer.
Repeat the previous two steps with the second egg, mixing until it is well mixed in and then add the remaining flour mix. Mix until all flour has been mixed in.
If you are using chocolate chunks, turn off the mixer and take the bowl out of the mixer. Add your chocolate and using a rubber spatula, fold in the chocolate and be careful that you do not break up the chunks of chocolate.
If you are using chocolate chips you can use the stand mixer to mix them into the dough.

Resting

Once you have the chocolate mixed in, I highly recommend wrapping it in plastic wrap and refrigerating for at least 12 to 48 hours, the longer you let it sit the better the cookies will come out.
If you are impatient like I am sometimes, skip this step and just follow method for baking.

Baking

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
Using a small spoon, scoop cookie dough into balls of about 1.5 teaspoon size, place on to a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.
After you have scooped the cookies to fill the tray, place one piece of the finishing salt on each of the cookies.
If you let your dough rest, place the tray back into the refrigerator until the cookies have completely cooled again. If you didn’t rest your dough, you do not need to do this.
Bake cookies for 3 to 4 minutes or until lightly golden brown. If you have a convection oven it will be about 3 minutes, and if you are using a standard oven it will be about 4 to 5 minutes. Keep an eye on them so you do not over bake them.
After the cookies have come out of the oven, place the tray on a cooling rack and let the cookies cool for 10 minutes or as long as you can wait.
After cookies have cooled, pour yourself a cold glass of your favorite milk and enjoy!

Notes

This recipe is very specific for the flour and sugar we use. Both the sugar and flour have a different moisture content than normal commercial white flour and sugar. We do not use any white sugar or commercial, all-purpose white flour at the restaurant in any of our products. For the chocolate, you can use your favorite chocolate chips or a chocolate bar that you can cut down into chunks. For the finishing salt, at the restaurant we use salt that we harvest ourselves from the Chesapeake Bay. If you would like to use some of our salt, contact us at the restaurant and we will see what we can do to get you some.