Chocolate Black Pepper Cookies

It is high time I had something sweet around this apartment. I was looking for a recipe that had no eggs or milk, since I didn't have any laying around. This fit the bill. However, if you follow the link, you'll see that it's not very descriptive. I had to convert all the measurements and play it by ear. I used half salted and half unsalted butter because I like a little salt in my sweet, but not too much. But here's where it got funky.

It's an icebox type cookie, but it's equal parts butter and flour, something I didn't think about until it came time to bake. At room temperature, the dough is like pudding. Straight from the refrigerator, it's rock hard. Rolling became an issue. Still, with a bit of waxed paper I managed to get something log-like.



However, I was afraid that the heat from the oven would melt the batter and start another lovely oven fire. Let's all be happy that didn't happen. Still, the cooking time got reduced to less than 9 minutes when they spread so thin that the edges were burning. These are very greasy and so delicate that they'll break if you look at them wrong. Since I like pepper in my chocolate, and these had a really good flavor, I'm willing to give them a second shot in the future. I would probably half the butter or nearly double the flour if I tried again. I'm not very good at the science behind baking, so if anyone else has suggestions, shoot them my way.



At least these were sweet, chocolaty, and nice with my tea. I could have done worse, though hopefully next time I'll do better.



Here's the conversions in case anyone is interested. Note: these are not exact, but close approximations.





1 cup butter
7 Tablespoons powdered sugar
1 cup flour
3 1/2 Tablespoons cocoa powder