Chocolate Charms (Pg 110)

My Mom re-named these Dirt Cookies. That's not as gross as it sounds, trust me. But let's be honest, they do kind of look like little clumps of dirt, don't they? They also have the texture of dirt. Like you know how you see cakes that are decorated for Halloween with crumbled up Oreos to look like dirt and then there are gummy worms coming out of the dirt? See, dirt is not always gross. If it's chocolate dirt, it's not gross.

There's a strong possibility that I messed these up, but I'm not entirely sure. It might just be a weird recipe.

After mixing the dough I noticed it was very dry. It wouldn't really hold together at all, it was just all crumbs. But the dough was meant to be refrigerated and that usually makes it hold together better. But it was only supposed to be refrigerated for 1 hour and I left it in there for almost 3 days. Hey, stuff happens. I don't always get right back to my baking when I expect I will.

3 days later the dough was still very crumbly and not holding together. But I have a feeling it was going to be like that no matter how long I left it in there, so if I made a mistake it was in the measuring for the dough.

The warmth of my hands as I was rolling it into balls helped it stay together, but it wasn't as neat as it was supposed to be. These were really supposed to be perfectly round little domes, and the cocoa powder was supposed to be completely coating them. The idea, as the book describes it, is that they look like a truffle, but then when you bite into them they're crumbly like shortbread.

Interesting idea, I have to say. I just didn't really want to dump all that cocoa powder all over the place. I treasure my cocoa powder. It all just sounded too wasteful, so I lightly sprinkled just a few for the picture.

These tasted good. Chocolate will always taste good. But they were pretty dry. You really had to have a nice glass of milk to wash them down, and in that case they were awesome. Without the milk...well, you know, they were dry. And had the texture of dirt.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 3 dozen

Actual: 2.5 dozen.

47 recipes down, 128 to go.