Coffee + Chocolate = Yummy

Hello, and welcome to our blog! For our first posting, we decided to report on an already-made goodie (because we knew you couldn’t wait to receive our pearls of baking wisdom). These are Espresso Chocolate Shortbread Cookies, from page 125 of Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (a book you should get if you don't have it already) — our favorite cookbook. They were very delicious, like everything from that book. Yesterday, Rebecca graduated from rabbinical school, and we ate them in joyous celebration, along with molasses cookies and chocolate cream pie, also from Dorie Greenspan. (You will be hearing more about those at a later date, I assure you.) Some notes:

1. We discovered that chocolate chunks are far superior to chocolate chips. Dorie Greenspan told us so but we didn’t listen until now. We used Scharffen Berger bittersweet chocolate, which Rebecca patiently shredded until it bowed to the awesome dominance of the Cutco knives.
2. Try to make the dough as square as possible when you roll it out. However, if you can’t, then never fear — you can always eat the little extraneous bits yourself.
3. The trick is to have the shortbread be really cold so that it doesn’t spread in the oven. That is why you have to keep in the fridge or the freezer until the last possible minute. If the dough softens, you can put it back in the fridge for a little bit before they bake.
4. The coffee taste is definitely present but not overwhelming. I don’t think it kept anyone awake.