Last week I got this idea of combining chocolate and red wine in baking, and doing so in the cookie form seemed like a good challenge. Since there’s not much liquid in a cookie dough, I decided to cook the wine into a syrup, and it worked wonderfully – the cookies went to the oven all shiny and dark, and came out a little crackled and wrinkly and extremely more-ish.
The flavor of these cookies is rather complex and surprising. The earthy fruitiness of the red wine syrup and the licorice undertones from the whole cane sugar match very well with the dark chocolate in my opinion. These might not be a crowd-pleaser I would bake for a birthday party, but I’d be proud to serve these for a small group of friends whose tastes I know well – and definitely to myself on a day when I need a lift of spirits!
The Cookie Dough (makes 10 cookies):
- 1 dl red wine (table wine, but nothing you wouldn’t drink)
- 1 and 1/2 dl whole cane sugar
- 2 dl wheat flour
- 1/2 dl good cocoa powder (Green & Black’s)
- 1/3 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/3 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon white sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 dl canola oil
- 35 g dark chocolate (70%, to fill the cookies with)
I placed the red wine and the whole cane sugar in a small cooking pan and heated them on medium heat until they started to boil. Then I let the mixture boil until it had thickened into 1 dl of thick syrup, for less than 10 minutes. Boiling the syrup for too long will make it too stiff when it cools – be careful, you don’t want to caramelize the sugar too much.
After reducing it, I poured the syrup in a small mixing bowl, mixed in the canola oil and the vanilla extract, and set it aside to cool down. Then I mixed the dry ingredients (wheat flour through white sugar) in another bowl, and set the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. When the syrup mixture had cooled down – it was still warm but not hot – I poured it in with the dry mix, and stirred with a fork until combined.
I took a small chocolate bar and divided it in 10 pieces. Then I rolled the dough into 10 round balls, and then folded a chocolate piece inside each ball, like so:
Now I placed the cookies on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper, flattened them a little bit, and baked them in 175 degrees Celsius for about 8 minutes, when they had spread a bit and the tops looked nice and crackled. This way I got soft cookies with just a little bit of crispiness on the outside – for a thoroughly crispier cookie, 1 to 2 minutes longer should work. After baking them I removed the cookies from the baking sheet to cool on a rack.
I especially love the melted chocolate in the heart of each cookie, so it’s a good idea to serve these warm even on the following days. We also tried a few of these cookies spreaded with some organic raspberry jam that has no added sugar in it, and that was a heavenly match!
27 Comments
MMM those look REALLY good!
Wow that looks so delicious!
I love the cracks on your cookies!
This is a fabulous idea, seriously. Though chocolate and red wine don’t necessarily go together in their natural forms, for some reason I can imagine the concentrated musky wine flavor going insanely well with dark chocolate. Kudos!
these look awesome! i’m totally trying this recipe!!
Thanks thanks you all, have a great cookie-ful weekend!
Chris – I know! I guess the wine loses its acidity when boiled with sugar, and it sort of just ends up adding depth to the chocolate flavor.
Hei Anni!
These look extremely tasty! So tasty in fact, that I think they could get me over my intense dislike of red wine. And even the bf, who rejects alcohol for religious reasons, could eat them because the alc evaporates.
Paljon kiitoksia!
What an interesting idea! I love the inside shot, they look so decadent and flavorful. What rich color!
My mouth is watering – these look great! And I especially like the novelty of adding red wine to the recipe!
Wow, what a great idea! They look fabulous.
Great idea! The cookies look fabulous! I brought back a few jars of malbec jam from Argentina, I bet theyd taste great in this recipe :)
These sound phenomenal! I love the combination of wine and chocolate in their usual forms, so why not in cookies?
Just found your site and love it, by the way! I’ve added you to my Google Reader–now off to check out your archives! :)
I absolutely love this blog! Thanks a lot for your lovely recipes, I definitely put this among my favorite blogs. =)
O_O !
bookmarked like you wouldn’t even believe!!
chocolate AND red wine? you are speaking my language!
Oh my god! These cookies look just sooo good. :P I truly love chocolate.
love the hidden chocolate center. do you use vegan chocolates? if so, what brand?
also, try chocolate and black pepper….really nice.
Hi Lenny, I think I used Lindt 70% chocolate in these – and yes, everything we ever use is vegan. I’ve noticed that the combination of black pepper and chocolate has been coming up here and there lately, I need to try it very soon!
love chocolate. love red wine. LOVE the idea of these cookies. Genius.
I made two batches of these today and they were delicious! The first batch was kind of a disaster: I boiled the wine and sugar for too long so that it became stiff when cooled, causing the batter to be stringy and dry. I had to add water quite a bit of water, and in the end, the consistency was coarse. (Though they still tasted good.) The second time, I rounded the metric quantities to US cups (1/2 cup for 1 dl) and used all-purpose flour because my wheat flour was old and overpowering. The dough was much easier to use and looked, and tasted, more appealing and consistent. I like strong flavors, so next time I might decrease the chocolate and sugar content and increase the wine concentration of the syrup.
Nicholas – I’m happy to hear you tried and liked these! And sorry to hear the first batch wasn’t quite perfect. I can definitely see how over-boiling the syrup might cause problems, so I’ll edit the recipe to add a warning.
I’m not sure how lowering the sugar content would affect the texture, but please do report back if you develop this recipe further!
These look so yummy. I almost bit my son’s nose when he come over to see what I was salivating about. They remind me of bon bons that we used to make for Christmas when I was a child.
Anni:
I finally got around to making these again (I am not 21 so I cannot buy my own wine) and I tried a few things.
First, I increased the wine by 3/2 (to 1.5 dl) and decreased the raw cane sugar by 2/3 (to 1 dl) and used brown sugar instead of white sugar. Again, I used 1/2 cup for 1 dl, so the quantities are a rough. These cookies came out very well I thought, although I’m not sure how they compare to the normal recipe. The dough was a bit sticky so I added another 1/4 cup of flour; however, after baked, I liked the ones without the extra flour more.
It is important to cool the syrup completely before baking because if they are too warm before baking, they will spread too much while in the oven. I haven’t been able to get the glossy top since I first made them and tried following the recipe exactly, but they’ve still tasted fine. It’s also important to take them off the pan soon or they will stick to the paper, but not so soon that they fall apart.
Thank you again for all your amazing recipes!
Wait, I have one more question. Why does this recipe use baking soda instead of baking powder? Is there acid in the wine or does the acid come from the cocoa? If it comes from the cocoa, does it mean Dutch processed cocoa should not be used since it has been neutralized with alkali?
(I ask because baking soda needs acid to create gases while baking powder has a dried acid that just needs water. I’ve been using non-Dutch processed cocoa, so perhaps this is why my cookies have been so puffy and un-shiny–because too much gas is being produced.)
Hi Nicholas – thanks for reporting back, it’s great to hear how committed you are! We Finns can buy alcohol at 18, so I keep fogetting not everyone does. About cocoa: actually it seems that in Europe it’s pretty hard to tell if it’s Dutch-processed or not – it never says so in the package. I read somewhere that most cocoas sold here are indeed Dutch-processed, and I do think that the Green & Black’s we use is as well.
I like to use baking soda in cookies exactly because it doesn’t make them too puffy – so you’re probably right! I think many ingredients can be slightly acidic, and wine definitely is (although not as much so after boiling), so the soda in my cookies still does its thing but not too much, and in your cookies it most likely reacts with the non-Dutch cocoa and produces too much puffiness… Also, I think sugar is not acidic, so reducing sugar would make the cookies even more acidic.
All this food science is making my head dizzy, so I hope what I just wrote makes sense!
Yes, your explanations were great; thank you very much for your insight.
As for reducing the sugar–the only reason I did so was to reduce the sweetness of the cookie. As much as I like sugar and candy, I appreciate very much cookies that aren’t too sweet.
And one final note: during the time I didn’t have wine, I tried a few variations. To one, I added a tablespoon of orange zest and a teaspoon of ground ginger, then added Green & Black’s Maya Gold Chocolate (a spicy, orange flavored chocolate). To the other, I added a teaspoon of mint extract. For both, I replaced water for the wine and omitted the vanilla. The orange one was great (I actually added ground black pepper the first time) and the mint one was also nice.
Hei. Olen tehnyt tämän ohjeen avulla keksejä monen monistuista kertaa ja aina ne vain ovat niin hyviä. Olen käyttänyt punaviinistä keitetyn siirapin sijaan ihan tummaa siirappia, viimeksi käytin lisänä myös vaaleaa rommia. Toimii!
Olisiko okei, jos lisäisin näiden keksien sovelluksen ohjeen blogiini, tietysti credittien ja asianmukaisten linkkien kera?
:)