Mast Brothers Chocolate, Brooklyn-based chocolatiers, just opened a shop in Williamsburg. I first came across their beautifully wrapped chocolate bars at the Coop, one design in particular with Tarot card imagery is especially apt in light of our current movie project. And because we keep talking about  trying to sell our cookies and maybe even opening a shop of our own, I made a half batch I think they'll like, of chocolate salty oat according to Stewart's recipe (course sea salt, lots of coconut and cacao nibs instead of chips or chunks). Tomorrow morning I am going to Williamsburg with five cookies in a yogurt container Stewart and I emptied in a breakfast or two on the island in Maine. I used Trader Joe's 72% dark chocolate and raw sundried organic cacao beans (chopped), I hope the brothers aren't too particular.

UPDATE: I didn't have a succinct idea about how to play the moment so I came off as kind of odd.  They appreciated the cookies as much as one could appreciate a leftover container full of dark brown biscuits (Stewart was calling cookies "biscuits" after spending four weeks in Spain with an Englishwoman) from a stranger (a friend saw them eating them later, which is heartening).  It was good to see their operation, how they use the space, the kitchen and the minimal "store."  They encouraged me to start with wholesale and I explained that I was waiting for my partner to settle down and start the business with me.  I bought a bar, "Dark Chocolate [70% Cacao] Single Origin Hispaniola, Domincan Republic," but I'm saving it until I decide to eat it as is, or chop it up or melt it down for cookies.

Stewart's absence is a much-lamented fact at the movie apartment. Much of what we shoot is a documentary of our real lives in the space, but it seems wrong to record the cookie-making process without his contribution. The cookies are good though. On camera yesterday, I made the original recipe (the one of the bag of Tollhouse semisweet chocolate chips) side by side with their latest incarnation:

Original (Latest)
Unsalted Butter (Unsalted Butter)
Brown Sugar (White Cane Sugar + Molasses)
Egg (Applesauce)
Vanilla (Vanilla)
All-Purpose Flour (All-Purpose Flour + Oats)
Baking Powder
Salt
Semisweet Chocolate Chips (Chunked 72% Dark Chocolate + Coconut Flakes + Walnuts)

I was surprised how bland the half batch of originals tasted -- experimentation continues to be fruitful.

I can only post briefly because I am working on this movie. Stewart came by the set today and we made these cookies:

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup white cane sugar
1 overflowing tsp molasses
1 scoop of apple sauce (of 1 anjou pear, 1 fuji apple, 2 candycrisp, 2 pinklady)
1 capful homemade Stoli-based vanilla extract
1/3 cup coconut
1/2 cup oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3/4 cup chunked 72% chocolate
1/2 cup walnuts

So soft, best cookies ever!

Yesterday, I put twelve cookies into the oven but when I took them out there were only eleven. My roommate says he got impatient. And as if that weren't enough, he dunked it in water before eating it, he said "to cool it off."

Stewart says, "not cool."

My good friend has lived on the Upper West Side for almost three years and I've lived in New York for a year and a half, yet until tonight I had never been to her apartment. It had become a point of contention between us and, for me, a symbol of the disconnectedness of the inhabitants of the city. There was only one way to start making things right, I brought my supplies in a yogurt container:

1 stick of butter (wrapped)
1 egg (in a plastic bag)

and in an empty cookie mix tin (ironically):

1/2 cup turbinado sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup oats
1/3 cup coconut flakes
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

[Sidenote: I did not bring vanilla because I am finally using the extract I began steeping in September, it is delicious, but in a 750ml Stolichnaya Vodka bottle with a loose top it is hard to transport, I need to keep a travel-size bottle for occasions such as this.]

I first mixed the butter and egg and then, in a fit of experimentation (if this works maybe we could market it), added all the rest of the ingredients from the tin at once. It did not combine easily, the large particulate ingredients getting between the flour and the egg/butter mixture. However, Aurora put her fork aside, washed her hands, and went at it, squeezing the dough between her fingers until we had a dense ball like pie crust. The cookies were a bit too grainy but nothing a little tinkering couldn't solve. My friend enjoyed them and I think we buried the hatchet over my long neglect -- we made a plan to meet regularly but when it came to actually setting a day, balked.

Stewart is spending four weeks in Spain. Just before he left, he and I made a triple half batch of chocolate chocolate chunk cookies for his elementary school class's second annual reunion get-together. Working with a tough oven and small baking trays, I burned my finger and not a few of the cookies, but the responsible substance using former classmates munched them happily through the foosball tournament, even with compliments and offers of financing for a bakery down the road -- one of Stewart's semi-former admirers asked us for a business plan, and so we are composing a poem. We added a Starburst candy to the center of one cookie, which we marked with an X and intended for David to eat, but to our dismay it circulated through the party and was picked up by an innocent bystander (sorry Anthony).

Five days later I was in Providence for New Years Eve, where I made vegan chocolate chip cookies with walnuts for the assembled revelers. I started with two sticks of Earth Balance. Earlier, at Whole Foods, I asked my friend if she had brown sugar and she said she uses molasses and sugar (her girlfriend refuted this claim but supported experimentation), so in the place of 1 cup of brown sugar I used 3/4 cup vegan white sugar and 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses (blackstrap, according to the baking science textbook I got for Christmas, is "inedible" but we beg to differ) -- I am convinced that this is a breakthrough, I would use maybe a different kind of molasses and less, but I have long been suspicious of brown sugar and hope that greater control and independence will result from the change. The dough turned dark brown and had a definite molasses flavor but after baking mellowed (in taste, not color, they were almost as dark as chocolate cookies). To replace the egg, I made an applesauce of five Golden Delicious, five Granny Smith, two Honeycrisp and two Bartlett pears -- the cookies had nice bits of peel showing and held together perfectly. And they were a hit. It was a good night for baking overall, including pistachio-fennel-apricot bread, cornbread, vegan carrot cake cupcakes and whole wheat dough veggie (cheese-less) pizzas.