Hi, I'm Earl. Product Manager at Chocolate Puddle Balls
Valentine’s day is a great excuse to indulge in decadent chocolates. While I am a stalwart fan of dark chocolate (I have a Costco-sized stash of Ghiradelli “Intense Dark” squares in my drawers), milk chocolate, white chocolate, mint chocolate, and any other type of chocolate I forgot to list are fair game. In a recipe I found at 101 Cookbooks, Heidi Swanson incorporates dark chocolate into a cookie recipe. I tweaked the recipe to include milk chocolate. In fact, I don’t see why you couldn’t include all different types of chocolates in this recipe.
Hence, I will forever immortalize, on the internet, my attempt at making Chocolate Puddle Cookies. The end result is shown above. Although, I had to improvise on multiple occasions to produce these Chocolate Puddle Cookies Balls.
First, I lacked the walnuts and powdered sugar, forcing me to downsize the recipe and substitute in milk chocolate chunks.
So I worked with what I had and prepared the dry ingredients. I began by sifting in the powdered sugar and dark chocolate into a bowl.
Sifting takes a long time with the mediocre tool that I had. Hence, I took a lot of pics during this process. Here we have a dark chocolate covered mountain.
Eventually, the dark chocolate overtakes the mountain.
After sifting the powdered sugar and dark chocolate, I added a pinch of salt and mixed the dry ingredients.
Then I grabbed my plate of chopped up walnuts and milk chocolate, and I added the solids to the dry ingredients.
Once the dry ingredients had a consistent appearance throughout the surface, I poured in the wet ingredients, eggs and vanilla extract.
The blending of the wet and dry ingredients is a bit difficult, but in the end I had a viscous batter that flowed like honey.
I then poured the batter onto a make shift “baking pan,” only to be disheartened by the puddle-looking piles of batter threatening to fall of my make shift pan.
The end result was not any better. The “cookies” stuck to the foil and crumbled upon pressure. What I managed to peel off of the foil is depicted here.
This first-batch failure called for a change of plans. I answered that call by pouring the remaining batter into a buttered baking dish and lightly baking the dish.
From here, I do not have any more step-by-step pictures because I became a bit rushed for time. However, after the second-batch came out of the oven, I scored the brownie-like “cookies” in the baking dish with crisscross patterns. This allowed me to easily scoop out chunks of the cookie and roll them into a ball. Once I had a ball of gooey, chocolaty cookie, I dusted it with some flour to finalize the aesthetic touches to this otherwise failed baking adventure. Luckily for me, the final product seemed like it came fresh out of an artisan bakery (or Dunkin Donuts, depending on your perspective). The chocolate puddle cookies/balls were incredibly sweet. They had a chewy consistency to them, and the chocolate puddle would melt under the heat of the mouth. This recipe is definitely a must-try. I do advise you should eat these in moderation, but in the spirit of Valentine’s Day, indulge.
