Chocolate of the Day: Better than Sex Cookies

Giant cookies filled with chocolate, nuts, and coconut? Y’all, this is my favorite cookie recipe of all time. I found it in one of my parents’ cookbooks sometime in high school and it is just SO good. Alas, I have no idea which one; it’s been… a while and Google was less than forthcoming; I had to have my mom find a copy I’d typed out ages ago and read it to me over the phone since my print-out is in storage. When I used to make them at my dad’s coffeehouse in college, a few of my friends would chase me into the kitchen and grab them off the tray as I pulled them out of the oven. And normally I hate coconut, but it works so well in these. And did I mention they’re freaking HUGE?

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• ¾ tsp baking soda
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 ¼ cup butter, softened (the recipe calls for unsalted, but I always use salted; either is fine)
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• ¾ cup granulated sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 1 tbsp vanilla
• 12 oz bag semi-sweet chocolate chips or chunks (or chop it yourself to ½” pieces if you feel fancy)
• 1 ½ cups sweet coconut flakes
• 8 oz walnuts, chopped (the original recipe calls for macadamias; use whichever you prefer)

Let’s get cookin’

Preheat the oven to 300° F. You probably don’t actually need to do this until the very end since they cook at such a low temp, but recipe conventions demand I tell you this first.

In a medium bowl, stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt, and set aside.

Beat the butter in your mixer using the paddle attachment for 60 seconds. Yes, it’ll look fine much sooner, but after a minute it’ll be super creamy. (If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can still make these, but due to the sheer volume of ingredients, your arms may be sore by the end and they won’t be quite as smooth.)

Add the sugars, then mix on medium for 3 minutes. Don’t skip this! Again, it’ll look fine after 30 seconds, but the texture will be amazing if you go the full time. You may need to stop partway through to scrape down the sides of the bowl; just pause the timer if you do so.

Add the eggs and vanilla and beat for another minute. (Tip: When I was a kid I always got mad that Mom wouldn’t let me crack the eggs if she was making something that required separating them, so I started going through the motions of separating them every time I cracked an egg. It’s good practice!)

Add the flour mixture in batches and mix on low until it’s just barely incorporated.

Stir in the coconut, chocolate, and nuts. I added the coconut in the mixer, then stirred in the chocolate chips and walnuts by hand so that the paddle didn’t break the chips, but the mixture was so thick I snapped the handle of my spatula and had to mix by hand. That was messy! (Tip: If you love to eat the dough but hate raw coconut, remember to have some before you add the coconut. Otherwise you will be sad.)

Drop the dough by quarter-cupfuls (not a typo!) onto your cookie sheet, leaving about 3″ between cookies and around the edge and bake for 23-25 minutes. The cookies should end up kind of enormous.

If the first batch comes out too thick, you may want to squish down the dough a bit on subsequent batches; the butter may be too cold for the batter to spread out properly. If it’s really warm in your kitchen, you may want to pop the dough in the refrigerator between batches since depending on how big your cookie sheets are, it may be a couple hours between when you finish the dough and when you finally get the last batch in the oven. Theoretically this recipe makes 20-25 cookies, though I must have made mine too small last time because I got 35.