Today's post is a little about being direct. Through the years, I have interfaced with a lot of people in business as well as social settings. After all this time, I can still say that I favor strong and direct people. They will tell you exactly what is on their mind, instead of reserving or keeping thoughts to themselves. While directness may not be pleasant at times, but at least you are not left wondering.
So if someone tells me "make it happen, no excuses" my reaction is more driven than someone that says "just try to see what you can do". Which leads me to this recipe in which one of the flavors was described as subtle. Along with directness, I feel that if you are going to include a flavor, it should be dominant as a single flavor or balanced if used in combination with other flavors. Which is why I took some liberties with this recipe to create a balance between the raspberry and the chocolate. The original recipe is below and the tips and notes include my additional ingredient tweaks and helpful hints- so read prior to making this recipe if you want a stronger flavor of raspberries in the cookie. This recipe does make a lot, about 5 dozen.
Now, let's move on to the description of these cookies. They are moist and soft cookie, swirled with two cookie doughs that include cream cheese. One batch of dough is chocolate and one is raspberry flavored. The blend of doughs come together to create a delicious cookie that makes for a lovely presentation- which is the best of both worlds. This recipe comes from a fellow blogger, Irvin Lin, who is very talented when it comes to creating baked goods and inspiring others. I have provided the link below.
Marbled Chocolate Raspberry Cookies
adapted from Eat the Love
Ingredients/Raspberry Dough
6 tbs or 3/4 stick butter (room temp)
1/4 cup or 2 oz cream cheese (room temp)
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 1/4 cup raspberries (6 oz)
zest of one lemon
2 3/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/2 cups plus 2 tbs sugar
Ingredients/Chocolate Dough
1 1/2 sticks or 12 tbs of butter (room temp)
1/2 cup or 4 oz cream cheese (room temp)
1 cup white sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 tbs vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 cup cocoa powder (natural not Dutch processed)
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup white sugar to roll cookies in (regular,sanding or sparkling type)
For the raspberry dough:
Start by making the raspberry jam. Place the raspberries in a bowl and mash with a potato masher, just until all raspberries have been flattened. Empty into a saucepan and add 2 tbs of sugar. Place over medium high heat and stir constantly. As the mixture heats up, it will become thicker. Cook the mixture until a wooden spoon can clear a path in the raspberry blend that remains. Since it is now a jam texture, remove from heat and let cool.
Measure out the dry ingredients (flour/salt/baking soda/baking powder) and sift together. Set bowl aside.
Add the cream cheese, butter and sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer. Beat ingredients together on medium speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl at intervals, until smooth and fluffy. This should take about 3 minutes. In a small bowl, whisk the egg with the lemon zest. Then pour into the batter. Run the mixer to distribute into the batter. Add the remaining egg yolk and blend again. Remove the bowl of the stand mixer and stir in the cooled raspberry jam. Then fold in the sifted ingredients and transfer the batter to an empty bowl. Set aside. Clean your batter blade and the mixer bowl in order to proceed to creating the chocolate dough.
For the Chocolate Dough:
Take out a medium bowl and sift together the cocoa powder, flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside.
Place the butter, cream cheese and both types of sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Cream the ingredients together by beating on medium speed, scraping down the sides of the bowl at intervals. It should take about 3 minutes to form a fluffy batter. Add the egg and beat until incorporated and then add the yolk and the vanilla extract. Blend with mixer on medium speed.
Remove bowl and fold in dry ingredients until no streaks of flour remain. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Dust a flat surface lightly with flour and fill a bowl with the sugar for rolling the dough
The cookies will need to be formed in stages of 1 dozen. Take one teaspoon of the chocolate batter and,using lightly floured hands, form into a small ball. Continue with this process, making 4 rows of 6 balls of dough spaced 2 inches apart side by side as well as up and down. Then take one teaspoon of the raspberry batter and form into a small ball. Continue with this process, but place each ball in a row, right under each row of chocolate dough balls. The end result is a total of 8 rows of 6 dough balls starting with a row of chocolate and alternating, ending with a row of raspberry. Pick up the chocolate dough ball at the top left and stack with the raspberry ball below it. Then add the chocolate ball below it and then the raspberry dough ball. Flatten the balls together and then roll into one big ball. Roll in sugar and place on prepared baking sheet about 2 inches apart.
Continue forming the cookies until there is a dozen on the baking sheet. Place in oven and bake for about 13-15 minutes. The cookies should be a light golden color on the bottom and edges when done.
Let cookies cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes then transfer to rack to finish cooling.
Repeat the forming and baking process until no dough remains.
Tips and Notes:
1. In order to increase the raspberry flavor, I used Belgian raspberry beer (Framboise Lambic) and 1 1/2 tsp of natural raspberry flavor. I filled a saucepan with 1 cup of the beer and boiled it until reduced down to 1/4 cup. Then I added the raspberries and the sugar. The natural raspberry flavoring (baktoflavors.com) was stirred into the raspberry mixture after it was completely cool.
2. Do not use thawed frozen raspberries, only fresh. Even though thawed, the fruit still has too much water content.
3. The chocolate dough is more dense than the raspberry. Once the dry ingredients are added to the raspberry batter the baking soda/powder mixture makes it rise. You may want to make both wet batters and then add the dry to both as a last step. Especially considering the time in forming the cookies.
4. Dough is less sticky and easier to work with when cold.
5. Another method for forming the dough is to divide each type of dough in half. Then roll out each half on a floured piece of parchment, forming a 12 by 5 inch rectangle. Stack the rectangles on top of each other, alternating types. Then cut dough into 1 inch squares and roll each square into a ball. Then roll in sugar and place on baking sheet. I did not try this, but the method would be a good time saver.
**LAST YEAR:Danish Butter Cookies**