Coffee Chocolate Chip Cookies: National Coffee Day

Today is National Coffee Day. So many ways to celebrate, especially if you add Chocolate. You can always have a Caffe Mocha. Chocolate Coffee Fudge, Chocolate Clouds in your Coffee, or pick up some Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans. Chocolate goes great coffee!

In honor of the day, I thought I'd post a recipe for Coffee Chocolate Chip Cookies. Everyone loves chocolate chip cookies. What I love about Chocolate Chip Cookies are the infinite varieties.

As I've mentioned before, your final product is only as good as your ingredients. Use the very best Chocolate, Espresso Beans, Vanilla, Flour, Butter and other ingredients!  This recipe calls for a baking stone. You can use a pizza stone. If you don't have one, you can make these Coffee Chocolate Chip Cookies the traditional way. The stone helps makes them gooey on the inside and crispy on the outside. I've adapted this recipe from  ehow.com.

COFFEE CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES

Ingredients
1 cup Sweet Butter, softened
2 fresh Large eggs (these should be room temperature)
2 cup Brown Sugar
6 Tbsp Granulated Sugar
5 tsp Pure Madagascar Vanilla Extract (I use Madecasse)
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 tsp Baking Powder
1 tsp Sea Salt
3- 1/2 cups King Arthur Flour
4 tsp Ground Espresso Beans (or finely ground coffee beans). Try this recipe with ground chocolate covered Coffee beans. Gives it just a bit more chocolate!
16 oz Dark chocolate (65-85% cacao) broken into pieces  (or dark chocolate chips)
Baking Stone

Method
1. Toss butter in microwave for 20 seconds to SOFTEN not melt the butter. (or leave out in advance, so it's already softened)
2. Cream butter and sugars together until fluffy. Mixture should be well blended but firm.
3. Add 2 eggs. Beat. Add Vanilla. Mix well. Set aside.
4. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into another bowl. Add the ground coffee or espresso beans.
5. Add dry ingredients to the wet mixure, beating in a little at a time. Fold in chocolate pieces (or chips). Possible to add walnuts, if you want them. I didn't put them in the ingredients above, but I always like chopped walnuts in my chocolate chip cookies.
6. Put Cookie Dough in the refrigerator for 2 hours to firm up. Put wax paper on top to prevent drying.
7. Pre-heat oven to 350. Put hot stone in Oven.
8. Take hot stone out of oven. Drop cookie balls (use a small scoop or form balls) onto the stone, smashing with fork after dropping. Put back in oven on the stone.
9. Cook for about 8 minutes. Depends on your oven, of course.
10. Transfer with spatula to Wire Rack.
Hint: Check the first one. If the cookies fall apart or aren't cooked all the way, give them another minute.