Tuesdays with Dorie: Chocolate Chunkers

Chipsters, Chunkers, Grabbers...we Doritos continue our obsession with twee-ly named cookies this week. "Chocolate Chunkers" have a rich, fudgy cookie base with lots of melted chocolate (unsweetened and bittersweet) AND cocoa in the batter, which is then loaded with chunks of bittersweet and white chocolate, chopped nuts, and dried fruit.

The original recipe calls for chopped peanuts (or pecans) and raisins. I spent my formative childhood years picking dry, hard raisins out of raisin bran and perfectly good oatmeal cookies, so you know there was no way I was letting a raisin anywhere near my precious chocolate cookies. Instead, I used chunks of high-quality Guittard bittersweet chocolate, Ghiradelli white chocolate, toasted hazelnuts, and dried cranberries. I think these would also be wonderful with chopped dried sour cherries.

I learned my lesson after the last TWD cookies, when mine fell a little flat and didn't look as gorgeous as the malt ball studded examples in the book. This time, I reserved some of the chocolate chunks, cranberries and nuts, and after mixing the dough and scooping them out on the baking sheets, I pressed some of the remaining add-ins on top of the cookies. I think this really improved their appearance, although the taste would probably have been the same either way.

Verdict: these cookies are tasty! I'm kind of a simple girl so they were maybe a little too full of chewy and crunchy elements, so next time I might cut the nuts and fruit down to 1/2 cup each so that I got more of the fudgy dough with each bite. But I thought the texture was fabulous, and I'm looking forward to baking off half of the dough that's calling to me in my freezer right now.

What did everyone else think?