MAKES 4 DOZEN COOKIES
Who can resist a star-shaped cookie? Hardly anyone! Add chocolate to the equation and you’ve seduced the few soul-less people who said they didn’t like stars.
Go out of your way to find truly excellent cocoa powder and chocolate bits for these little stars. Specialty coffee shops will often sell exceptional chocolate products, so don’t overlook them in your search.
Amy uses a “full-Dutch” process cocoa called “Jersey cocoa” that has 22- to 24-percent fat and is available through the San Francisco-based cookware chain Williams-Sonoma. (Yes, there really is a Chuck Williams, and he really is devoted to scouting out the best!)
If you are shopping for cocoa near to home, look for the darkest unsweetened sort available. As with coffee beans, darkness should not equate with bitterness; the flavor, while not sweet, should be smooth.
4 ounces (1 stick) cold unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
½ cup sugar
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
⅛ teaspoon fine sea salt
⅛ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup (2 ounces) finely chopped semisweet chocolate (⅛-inch bits)
1. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until smooth and light, 3 to 4 minutes. Add the vanilla, flour, cocoa, salt, baking soda, and chocolate bits, and mix until well blended, about 2 minutes. Gather the dough into a ball and flatten slightly.
2. Dust a large piece of parchment paper with flour. Place the dough in the center. With a lightly floured rolling pin, roll out the dough to an even ¼-inch thickness. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate the rolled-out dough until firm, about 1 hour.
3. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Move an oven rack to the middle position. Line large baking sheets with parchment paper.
4. Using a 2-inch star-shaped cookie cutter, cut out the cookies. Place ½ inch apart on the prepared baking sheets. The scraps can be re-rolled and cut.
5. One sheet at a time, bake until the cookies are firm enough at the edges to slide easily off the parchment, 12 to 15 minutes. The cookies will be soft but will crisp as they cool. Cool on the baking sheets set on wire racks.
Use the best ingredients. Great unsalted butter, newly harvested nuts, rich vanilla extract, and excellent chocolate can add immeasurably to a cookie. More than any baking technique, your ingredients will make you a star.
• Wrap the cookie dough airtight for chilling or freezing so that it doesn’t dry out or discolor. Plastic wrap is best, especially the super-clingy kind that might otherwise drive you wild.
• Chill the dough thoroughly and cut it with a very sharp knife with a thin, large blade. Both steps make for the perfect slices that result in evenly baked, pretty cookies. Amy uses a Chinese cleaver for cutting her cookies and stares down the cooks if they even think of borrowing it for vegetables. The heft of the knife makes cutting the dough easy, and the sharp blade cuts it cleanly.
• Invest in a couple of heavy-duty baking sheets, if you don’t already have them. They distribute heat with consummate evenness and they won’t warp—both important assets when baking miniature cookies.
• Invest, too, in a roll of parchment paper or, better yet, if you have access to a restaurant or baking supply store, a box of large parchment sheets. These save fabulously in the dish-washing department.
• Use the center rack position of the oven for baking and rotate the baking sheet midway through the allotted baking time. If you are baking on two racks, rotate the sheets top to bottom as well as back to front. Do the rotation(s) quickly to minimize the amount of heat that escapes from the oven.
• Get into the habit of pulling the cookies from the oven several seconds earlier than you might otherwise and letting them cool undisturbed on the baking sheet. The benefit is that the cookies won’t need handling before they turn crisp and won’t suffer the damage usually inflicted (at least by me) when moving them with a spatula to a cooling rack. The cookies will finish their final bit of baking on the hot baking sheet, which you should balance on a trivet or rack to speed the cooling.
• Store thoroughly cooled cookies at room temperature in an airtight container; their flavor will hold better than if they were frozen. If the cookies soften, re-bake them in a preheated 350°F oven for 3 to 5 minutes, or until heated through. Then remove the tray to a cooling rack where the cookies will recrisp as they cool.