Recipes from the Book
Read The Ingredients of Us now!
To celebrate the launch of my debut novel, The Ingredients of Us, I’m sharing recipes from the book! Want sweet monthly recipes sent straight to your inbox? Head on over to Jenni’s Cafe, my monthly newsletter.
Double-Chocolate Comfort Cookies
Find the recipe on Page 203
“Have a taste [of the dough]. It’ll present itself as an explosion of chocolate, but more than that, something deep and complex, full bodied in flavor. Appreciate the sugars’ grit, the disintegration of the dough on your tongue. Salivate. Have more.”
I have made a lot of cookies in my life, and let me tell you, nothing compares to these. In The Ingredients of Us, my character Elle makes them for comfort. I make them to impress people at parties or, even better, eat them in my pajamas alone where people won’t judge me for having more than one.
Ingredients:
1 cup Ghirardelli semisweet chocolate chips, plus extra
1 cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened but still firm
¾ cup packed light brown sugar
½ cup granulated sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon espresso powder
Steps:
Turn on music with some heart — Adele, Whitney Houston, something that elicits some impassioned (albeit out of key) singing. Put on an apron—cocoa powder has a funny way of getting all over everything.
Heat the chocolate in a glass bowl on half power in the microwave, about 3 minutes, stirring halfway through. Eat extra chocolate chips, obviously.
Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt into a bowl. I know, I know. It’s messy and inconvenient. But I promise it’s worth it.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Cream the butter with an electric mixer on high speed until it’s fluffy.
Add the sugars and beat until the mixture is a pale cloud of sweet buttery goodness.
Scrape down the sides of the bowl and add one egg at a time, beating after each.
Add the vanilla and espresso powder and revel in that amazing smell that’s now wafting through your kitchen.
Add the melted chocolate to make the smell swoon-worthy.
Now on low speed, mix in the dry ingredients.
Obviously, you’ll want more chocolate in these cookies, so add a cup of extra chocolate chips for texture. You can add other things, too, like butterscotch chips or walnuts, but I keep it classic with semisweet chocolate chips only.
Now, using an ice cream scoop, spoon, or fingers, shape the dough into golf balls. Place dough balls on a parchment-lined cookie sheet with plenty of space between each.
Bake the cookies for ten minutes, rotating the cookie sheet halfway through. The cookies will appear undercooked when you pull them out of the oven and you’ll wonder, “Jenni, what the hell are you thinking, baking these for only 10 minutes?” Just trust me.
Slide the cookies onto a cooling rack with the parchment still underneath them for support. If you have leftover dough, repeat the baking process. I won’t judge you if you skip baking it and just eat it with a spoon—you do you.
The cookies will continue to firm up as they cool. These are brownies in cookie form. Crispy edge, gooey middle. Eat one immediately.
Take them to a party to impress. Or freeze them and microwave one at a time to eat with vanilla ice cream. On second thought, don’t go to that party. Definitely stay home and keep all the cookies for yourself.
About the Book: The Ingredients of Us
Love doesn’t come with a recipe
From debut author Jennifer Gold comes a delicious novel about the sweet and sour ingredients of life and love
Elle, an accomplished baker, has a recipe for every event in her life. But when she discovers her husband’s infidelity, she doesn’t know what to make of it. Jam, maybe? Definitely jam.
Fed up with the stale crumbs of her marriage, Elle revisits past recipes and the events that inspired them. A recipe for scones reminds her of her father’s death, cinnamon rolls signify the problematic courtship with her husband, and a batch of chocolate cookies casts Elle in a less-than-flattering light. Looking back, Elle soon realizes that some ingredients were missing all along.
After confronting her husband, Elle indulges her sweet tooth in other ways, including a rebound that just leaves her more confused. As secrets from the past collide with the conflicts of the present, Elle struggles to manage her bakery business and maintain the relationships most important to her. In piecing her life back together, will Elle learn to take the bitter with the sweet?