Hi there!

Somebody I spoke to about getting a Ph.D. once said that you can enjoy  graduate school- you just need to “embrace the masochism.”

In part in honor of that, I made what I’m terming “Masochist Cookies”, for reasons that will be apparent shortly…

These are a slight variation on chocolate chip cookies. And they are NOT for everyone, but some will really like them.

Masochist Cookies

A “Fun” Variation on Chocolate Chip

Ingredients

• 1 1/8 Cup of Flour
• 1 stick of butter
• 1 egg
• 1/2 Cup dark brown sugar
• 1/4 Cup white sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1 Cup Chocolate Chips

“Masochist” addendum:

• 1 tsp – 1 Tbsp cocoa powder
• 1/8 – 3 tsp cayenne (depending on spice preferences)
• 1/4 – 1 tsp cinnamon

Directions

Ok. So, what I did tonight was I made the basic chocolate chip cookie dough, and then played with it…

To make the plain dough, basically just combine all the ingredients. This time I put the “dry” ingredients in first. So, flour, baking soda, salt, sugar. Mix those up nicely. I then melted the butter, and mixed that in, and then added the egg. I next added the “Masochist” part. Then I let the dough chill in the fridge for about an hour while I read another chapter in Theory of International Politics by Kenneth Waltz for a class, and then dished the cookies onto the cookie tray. (I heated the pre-oven to about 350, made really tiny cookies, and baked them for about 7 minutes. Seriously, they were miniscule. I got about 3 dozen cookies onto one sheet. So, mini chocolate-chip / butter-toffee cookie size like what you can get at the grocery store type of tiny.) If you go for normal size cookies, heat the oven to between 350 and 375, and cook them for between 9 & 11 minutes, or until you can smell them, basically.

For the “masochist addendum”. I first mixed up the basic dough.

I then pulled about half of it out, and mixed the cocoa powder in. After that, I pulled half of the chocolate dough out, and mixed the cayenne and cinnamon in. Tonight, I think I used about 1/4 tsp of cinnamon, and a bit less than 3/4 tsp cayenne. That was MUCH more cayenne than I meant to use. It turned out very noticeably, and the dough definitely deserved its title. But that’s why there’s a VERY wide range for the seasonings listed above- I made basically a quarter recipe of the masochist cookies. Increasing the yield would (in theory) require increasing the ingredients.

In order to determine how much cayenne and cinnamon to use, though, I’d seriously just sample the dough. Start with smaaaall quantities, though. Especially of the cayenne. Especially if you’re not entirely sure about the “hot chocolate” element. 🙂

So, yeah! I hope you enjoy! And have a great Saturday.