Need help with baking chocolate cookies

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I made cookies for the first time yesterday I followed a Tasty(Buzzfeed) recipe on youtube and prep went fine but I had problems when I baked the cookies. The recipe said 180 C for 12 minutes and I kept it in for 12 minutes and it turned out soft when I slightly poked the top of the cookie. So, I put it on for 5 more minutes and it seemed done but the chocolate didn't melt; so I thought I'd turn the broiler on for 2 minutes, and that only made the cookie brown and didn't do anything to melt the chocolate. I didn't use chocolate chips but instead just chopped chocolate bars (Maybe the chocolate was too hard). The cookies I baked yesterday were each about 40 grams and the rest I put in the fridge are around 60 grams.

Can anyone please help me with what I'm doing wrong? Also, how long would it take to bake the 60-gram ones with melted chocolate?

Thanks
 
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I made cookies for the first time yesterday I followed a Tasty(Buzzfeed) recipe on youtube and prep went fine but I had problems when I baked the cookies. The recipe said 180 C for 12 minutes and I kept it in for 12 minutes and it turned out soft when I slightly poked the top of the cookie. So, I put it on for 5 more minutes and it seemed done but the chocolate didn't melt; so I thought I'd turn the broiler on for 2 minutes, and that only made the cookie brown and didn't do anything to melt the chocolate. I didn't use chocolate chips but instead just chopped chocolate bars (Maybe the chocolate was too hard). The cookies I baked yesterday were each about 40 grams and the rest I put in the fridge are around 60 grams.

Can anyone please help me with what I'm doing wrong? Also, how long would it take to bake the 60-gram ones with melted chocolate?

Thanks

Time is just an estimate. Each oven is different. If you bake and roast a lot, it’s best to buy an oven thermometer to ensure your oven temperature is accurate.

Just because it was a chocolate bar doesn’t mean it was couverture chocolate and not a compound chocolate. Look on the ingredients list. The only thing you want to see on the label is cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar, emulsifier (its usually soy lecithin), and an maybe a flavoring.

If you see the word ”powder” or “oil” or any reference to an oil like “sunflower” even if the word oil isn’t included, then it is still referencing an oil. Any chocolate with a powder, oil, or referencing an oil is a using an oil. So they are compound chocolates.

Now that said, couverture chocolate may not completely and totally melt into a cookie. It depends on the amount of cocoa butter in the chocolate. The higher the percentage of cocoa butter, the more it will melt.


This is couverture chocolate. It was cut from a 5 kilo block. This particular block is 54.5% cocoa, so this is going to melt alot. This isn’t my preferred chocolate for a cookie, it is more suited for dipping.
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Most drop cookies should still be soft coming out of the oven; they'll continue cooking from carry over cooking and their structure will continue to set as they cool. For cookies that are crisp on the edges, but soft in the middle, my cue for when they're done is usually when the edges are just set - you can slightly lift the outermost edge of the cookies off the baking tray - but the centers are still very soft and undercooked at this point. Your cookies turned out very crunchy because you cooked them too long, and of course the broiler only exacerbated that.

As to why your chocolate didn't melt, I'm honestly a bit perplexed at that but check its ingredients. Chocolate chips retain their shapes compared to chopping chocolate from bars because they have less cocoa butter (which melts at a low temperature), and use additional stabilizers and emulsifiers. However, even then chocolate chips should still melt by the time the cookie is done baking, but it retains its shape and will re-solidify much more quickly than real chocolate. I've also heard that having expired chocolate also affects its ability to melt, but can't tell you the exact reason for that.
 
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Time is just an estimate. Each oven is different. If you bake and roast a lot, it’s best to buy an oven thermometer to ensure your oven temperature is accurate.

Just because it was a chocolate bar doesn’t mean it was couverture chocolate and not a compound chocolate. Look on the ingredients list. The only thing you want to see on the label is cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar, emulsifier (its usually soy lecithin), and an maybe a flavoring.

If you see the word ”powder” or “oil” or any reference to an oil like “sunflower” even if the word oil isn’t included, then it is still referencing an oil. Any chocolate with a powder, oil, or referencing an oil is a using an oil. So they are compound chocolates.

Now that said, couverture chocolate may not completely and totally melt into a cookie. It depends on the amount of cocoa butter in the chocolate. The higher the percentage of cocoa butter, the more it will melt.


This is couverture chocolate. It was cut from a 5 kilo block. This particular block is 54.5% cocoa, so this is going to melt alot. This isn’t my preferred chocolate for a cookie, it is more suited for dipping.
View attachment 3086View attachment 3087

These were the ingredients in the chocolate I used. I personally don't understand any of it. But I'm assuming it wasn't very good chocolate because it was pretty cheap.

Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Dried Whole Milk, Cocoa Butter, Lactose (Milk), Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Vanilla Extract, Milk Chocolate contains: Cocoa Solids 28% minimum, Milk Solids 14% minimum
 
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Most drop cookies should still be soft coming out of the oven; they'll continue cooking from carry over cooking and their structure will continue to set as they cool. For cookies that are crisp on the edges, but soft in the middle, my cue for when they're done is usually when the edges are just set - you can slightly lift the outermost edge of the cookies off the baking tray - but the centers are still very soft and undercooked at this point. Your cookies turned out very crunchy because you cooked them too long, and of course the broiler only exacerbated that.

As to why your chocolate didn't melt, I'm honestly a bit perplexed at that but check its ingredients. Chocolate chips retain their shapes compared to chopping chocolate from bars because they have less cocoa butter (which melts at a low temperature), and use additional stabilizers and emulsifiers. However, even then chocolate chips should still melt by the time the cookie is done baking, but it retains its shape and will re-solidify much more quickly than real chocolate. I've also heard that having expired chocolate also affects its ability to melt, but can't tell you the exact reason for that.

Ok, next time I'll just take the cookies out at 12 minutes like the recipe said and let them cool to see what happens. Also, I think the chocolate didn't melt because it was in the fridge and I took them out, chopped, mixed with cookie dough, and put them in the oven in a span of 10 mins. Thanks for your help. :)
 
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These were the ingredients in the chocolate I used. I personally don't understand any of it. But I'm assuming it wasn't very good chocolate because it was pretty cheap.

Sugar, Cocoa Mass, Dried Whole Milk, Cocoa Butter, Lactose (Milk), Emulsifier (Soya Lecithins), Vanilla Extract, Milk Chocolate contains: Cocoa Solids 28% minimum, Milk Solids 14% minimum

Dried whole milk is powdered milk, so this is more a compound chocolate. To get a rich melted chocolate, you will need to use a premium chocolate. Right now everything is closed because of COVID-19. But cake supply shops, at least in the US, usually carry couverture chocolate. Also check in you better grocery stores in the deli section. At least in the US, fine chocolate is available in the better stores.

Refrigerating your cookie dough won’t have any effect on it melting in the oven. One of the most famous chocolate chip cookies in the US is made by famous chocolatier who refrigerates his cookie dough for 36 hours before baking. And that chocolate pretty much melts through and through the cookie
 
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Ok, next time I'll just take the cookies out at 12 minutes like the recipe said and let them cool to see what happens. Also, I think the chocolate didn't melt because it was in the fridge and I took them out, chopped, mixed with cookie dough, and put them in the oven in a span of 10 mins. Thanks for your help. :)

Where’s the brown sugar! This is key to achieving a chewy cookie


This is nice, if you like chunkier cookies. Freezing is key.
 
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@Ether I baked some cookies for my niece on Wednesday. I make my dough the night before I bake. I form the dough balls the day I bake, then freeze the dough balls for about 20 - 30 minutes before I bake them. As you can see chilled dough does not prevent the chocolate from melting. However a warmer dough will spread a little bit more in the oven. The first few cookies were baked without the freezer chill time.

77916BCB-B0E7-467D-944A-21B3A0568BC6.jpeg



Chocolate starts to melt in oven even with chilled dough. This dough ball was in the freezer for some 20 minutes or so before I baked it.
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The four cookies on the bottom were the first dough balls I scooped. So the dough was a little bit warmer and you can see they spread just slightly more. The four cookies on top were in the freezer after I formed the dough balls waiting to be baked.

I weigh my dough; each dough ball weighed 70 g. So
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I made cookies for the first time yesterday I followed a Tasty(Buzzfeed) recipe on youtube and prep went fine but I had problems when I baked the cookies. The recipe said 180 C for 12 minutes and I kept it in for 12 minutes and it turned out soft when I slightly poked the top of the cookie. So, I put it on for 5 more minutes and it seemed done but the chocolate didn't melt; so I thought I'd turn the broiler on for 2 minutes, and that only made the cookie brown and didn't do anything to melt the chocolate. I didn't use chocolate chips but instead just chopped chocolate bars (Maybe the chocolate was too hard). The cookies I baked yesterday were each about 40 grams and the rest I put in the fridge are around 60 grams.

Can anyone please help me with what I'm doing wrong? Also, how long would it take to bake the 60-gram ones with melted chocolate?

Thanks

candy bars are mostly sugar, it barely melts, it tends to crystalize and turn hard.

Chocolate doesn't flow when melted unless agitated, maybe you were expecting it to melt out (flow).
Its a quality known as thixotropy.
You can see this quality when trying to get ketchup to pour from a bottle, it doesn't move until the bottle is agitated, they add cabosil or other jel agents to make it thixotropic.
 
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i'm facing the same issue above where my choice coverture does not melt after being baked. they are very tiny chunks, similar in size to chocolate chips but they are coverture as indicated in the ingredients list. Please help!
 
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i'm facing the same issue above where my choice coverture does not melt after being baked. they are very tiny chunks, similar in size to chocolate chips but they are coverture as indicated in the ingredients list. Please help!
If the first ingredient listed is sugar it's not couverture.
 

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