I don’t have any vices (coffee is a fundamental building block of life, and I will cut you I swear to god), and I’ve never had a sweet tooth. But since I did the life reboot and cut literally everything that was even close to being a vice out of my life, I’ve slowly and steadily developed these weird sugar cravings. I’m sure there are medical and psychological reasons, but that’s not what this is about.
This is about how I made these amazing cookies to satisfy both my desire to make a thing and have something sweet to shove into my face after dinner last night. I cobbled this recipe together from different bits from all over the Internets, didn’t take notes because I didn’t plan to write this post, and am doing this from memory.
Chocolate Chip Cookies With Coconut Oil and Cacao Nibs by Wil
Coconut oil is healthier than regular vegetable oil, and it gives a delicate sweetness to the foods you make with it. It may be overwhelmed by the other sweeteners in these cookies, but I prefer it to butter. Cacao nibs give this really nice extra crunch and bitter chocolate flavor (because they’re unsweetened) that balances out the sweetness in the rest of the cookies.
This makes about 12 cookies. If you need more, do the math. I believe in you.
I really want to do this all by weight, because that’s how I do my bread baking and coffee roasting/brewing, but I think it would be showing off and making things complicated when they don’t have to be, so I’m going to use standard measurements.
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1 cup coconut oil
- 1 egg
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon(ish) of salt
- 1/2 cup chocolate chips
- 1/4 cup cocoa nibs
In a perfect world, we’d throw all this stuff into a bowl, say, “Boy am I glad Donald Trump isn’t president,” and mix it all up at once. But that’s not how this works, because everything is terrible and we’re making cookies to forget that for a few minutes.
So start out — Oh. Wait. I forgot to tell you to preheat the oven. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.
Okay. Good job. You’re doing great.
Put the sugar into a bowl and give it a stir with a fork or whatever, just so that it’s kinda mixed up. This isn’t for any reason related to baking or chemistry, it’s just that the two colors of sugar look cool when they swirl together. It reminds me of this toy my parents had when I was a little kid that was blue sand and white sand and they wouldn’t mix together, but they would swirl around in this big oval thing and it looked really cool, like the clouds on Jupiter.
Add the coconut oil (which is probably going to be really firm since it’s winter, but if it’s melty because it’s warm in your kitchen or it’s summer when you’re making this or you live near the equator where it’s warm all the time that’s fine, too) and now stir it all together. If your coconut oil is firm, it’s probably going to separate into hunks (and not the cool fireman calendar kind). If that happens, just use your fork or whatever your stirring thing of choice is to smash the hunks around and get the mixture as smooth as you can. This is called “creaming” the ingredients together. I know it sounds kind of dirty, but I’m going to let you make whatever joke you want.
Now add the egg and the vanilla to the creamed oil and sugar, and stir it all up.
Most recipes tell you to combine the dry ingredients in another bowl. I think this is stupid and a waste of your time, creates a whole other bowl you have to wash, and isn’t something you need to do. So you can be a rebel like me and just start adding the dry ingredients to your bowl, or you can be a fucking lemming and put them in another bowl like The Man wants you to. Hey, if you want to be a puppet of Big Bowl, go nuts. I would say that I’m not judging you, but I’m totally judging you.
So add the salt and then the baking soda to the bowl, and give it a stir or two. Then take your flour, half a cup at a time, and mix it in. It’s going to be clumpy and annoying, but you just keep on adding it in until it’s more or less in one big hunk of dough.
Now, at this point, I stop using my spoon or fork or whatever, and I switch to using my hands. This is a thing I picked up from Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, which is teaching me how to bake bread: for combining stuff like this, actually using your hands gives you a sense of what the dough really feels like, and gets you closer to what you’re making, so you can literally get a better feel for it. You don’t have to do this, of course, but it’s fun, feels kind of like mooshing Play*Doh around, and it’s just satisfying to combine all that stuff together with your fists.
Mix in your chocolate chips a little bit at a time until they’re all in the dough. I used to wonder why I couldn’t just dump them all in at once, which is a legitimate question. The answer has two parts. First, it’s the way we do it, okay? It’s always been this way and if it’s not broken don’t try to fix it. If you’re so goddamn smart with your “dump them all in at once” idea, why does literally every recipe tell you to put them in a little bit at a time? You think you’re smarter than centuries of bakers? I’m so proud of you. You sicken me. Second, it actually does make a difference in the way that the chips are spread around in the dough, so that each individual cookie has a good amount of chips in it.
After you’ve put your chips in, you can put in the cocoa nibs and mix them up, too. The dough is probably getting pretty stiff at this point, so remind it to think unsexy thoughts and keep on mixing until you feel like they’re spread pretty evenly around the whole thing.
Grab a cookie sheet. If you have a Silpat
Separate the dough into 12 parts and put them on the cookie sheet. I did six at a time, in two batches, but you don’t have to do it that way if you don’t want to.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, take the cookies out of the oven, and let them sit on the cookie sheet for two or three minutes before moving them to a rack to completely cool.
Be careful if you dive into these while they’re still hot, because the super melty chocolate chips can burn the fuck out of your mouth.
These cookies have infinity calories and will last for like fifteen minutes, so you should eat them all before they spoil.
You’re welcome.
You definitely need to write more recipes. I don’t know that I will ever make these, but I enjoyed reading about them!
Must buy “Thug Kitchen”. Vegan, but good — and fun to read.
LOL. Oh man. Great read I’ll make these too. I’ll have to alter them a little for a diabetic.
Very relieved this wasn’t a boring recipe, I shouldn’t have doubted you. 👍🍪
Gonna be honest here, I’ve been craving these cookies since you and Anne brought some over a few weeks ago. Amanda and I were just discussing over the weekend if we were going to make Christmas cookies this year. We opted to get some cookie dough from Trader Joe’s and take the lazy route. But that stuff might just go in the freezer for later because I HAVE to try making these ourselves. We’ll let you know how they turn out.
Instructions unclear. Donald Trump still president-elect.
But seriously, I want every recipe in the world to be written like this.
Thank you for this entertaining recipe – as always, it is a joy to read your stream of consciousness works. As a self-taught baker of sweets and breads for over 30 years, here are a few of my thoughts:.
1) Parchment paper is your friend – I use it as an alternative to silpat and it is totally recyclable when you are done with it (and you can often use it several times before it is too greasy or brown and crispy). Also, for cookies like these, you can just slide the paper off your baking sheet and onto the cooling rack – all at once!
2) I too am a one bowl rebel. Have been baking this way for a long time. It is important, however, if you are this kind of rebel, to be sure your baking soda/powder has no lumps and is stirred in well before you put in the flour. The salt and leavening needs to be evenly distributed and there is nothing worse than biting into a leavening lump – ick.
3) For this type of cookie, you CAN put all the flour in at once – it just takes more (careful) stirring at the beginning and elbow umph at the end to get to the final result. Not recommended for those new to the process.
4) Huh – I have ALWAYS just dumped in the chips and stirred (like the flour) – and none of the recipes I use say to add them a bit at a time. irregularity in chip spread, however, is seen as part of the experience in our house (a feature not a bug, if you will), as it allows folks to choose higher or lower density chip ratios to meet their current desires. [It is sort of our family’s method of gambling, I suppose..]
Oh yeah, parchment paper is rad. Good point.
LOL this makes me think of Thug Kitchen.
I would love a series of sassy Wil recipes
This is the most entertaining recipe I have ever read. I feel like I want to do that thing where you quote the bits that made you laugh but I would just be reposting this blog entry so I won’t do that. Instead I might go make a batch of cookies and eat them all before they turn. (I did mean go bad or off when I wrote that but now am picturing zombie cookies.)
Hi Wil – About 2 years I had to cut back on the sugar, I was borderline diabetic but i’ve managed to get it back under control.
My husband has a manic sweet tooth so I’ve had to experiment with different recipes and come up with my own.
If you want to cut back on some calories and sugar, there’s a brown sugar/stevia blend mix that you can use. Substitute that for the brown sugar, omit the white sugar. It takes just as good, I swear..chocolate chip cookies aren’t to be messed with, so I was skeptical. They turned out pretty good.
I also use the same approach on a banana bread recipe I modified. Omit the white sugar, use the stevia blend, use wheat flour and substitute about 1/2 cup of flour with rolled oats. It makes it a little dense but just as good, lots of fiber. I’ve thrown a couple of tablespoons of flax in there every one in a while, but that stuff is dangerous! LOL
This is pretty relentlessly charming, as recipes go.
I’m in favor of coconut oil for cooking in a big way, especially when I play on letting my small human have any, so I am into trying this. With Duren on basically all points, especially the feature-not-bug of chip irregularity spread. I like using broken up batons instead of chips, so it works out for people who have Strong Feelings About Dough and Chocolate Ratio, Those Picky Jerks (it’s me. I’m the jerk).
Thanks for sharing.
I’m so glad I follow you, Wil.
Awesome recipe.
What about some oatmeal, though?
I find some oatmeal adds good texture to cookies.
yum! Stick your ribs kind of yum! Coconut flakes too! maybe. if that’s your thing…
Actually, coconut oil is mostly saturated fat while most doctors would prefer you take unsaturated fat instead. However, the research on this all is still considered controversial. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturated_fat_and_cardiovascular_disease_controversy about this topic…
I can totally picture you sitting at your computer, typing this out, laughing evil laughs or chuckling like a 12 year old.
I have found coconut oil to a be a real asshole if it is still in solid form, and if your juevos are cold, stick your hands down your pants and warm them up…wait, wrong comment. Scratch that. I meant, make your eggs room temperature before adding them with the oil so it doesn’t turn into a solid. Oh and parchment paper works wonders. I just wish my kids would learn to use it when making frozen pizza because I hate having to soak those dang pans with baked on pizza cheese and stuff and it takes forever and the pans don’t fit into the sink so you have to get wet paper towels and lay them over the baked stuff but you can’t get the paper towel too drippy or they will leak onto your counter and make a mess and then later you have to use the paper towels to wipe off the excess cheese, but because the cheese hates you, you still have to scrape it off, damaging your pans.
GET OUT OF MY HEAD BETH.
By the way, this particular “voice” of yours is my favorite. Funny, snarky, sarcastic, immature, intelligent, cocky, rebellious…[thumbs up]
My grandparents had that exact (or at least, something really close) oval thing with the blue and white sand! I remember that I made my Momma buy it for me from my grandparents’ garage sale, decades ago when I was young. I still have it. I’m glad I do; it reminds me of my Grandma and Grandpa.
These look great, I will have to cook up a batch and give them a try. I can’t say I have ever used cacao nibs in anything before, so should be interesting.
Yes yes yes on the sugar cravings increasing with alcohol intake decreasing. The same thing is happening to me.
this was a wonderful post, wil! it was fun to read, it fulfilled its purpose of lifting our spirits and letting us laugh a bit, AND best of all, it was full of your signature wheaton snark at its playful best! thank you so much for all your makings and for staying in the world with us.
love you, man!
That can be the name of your new culinary line. Double Entendre. Improves every recipe.
Despite my resistance to the coconut oil fad (“it waxes your car!” “it cures cancer!”) I may be forced to actually buy some for this amazing recipe.
Things I didn’t realize I needed in my life: a cookbook written by Wil Wheaton.
And now I kind of want to see you streaming cooking/baking things on Twitch. Because that’s totally a thing you can (and should) do.
Re: sugar/fat craving. Have you changed medications lately? I don’t want to publicly get into details, but since I am posting you have my email address if you need more, but one of the medications my wife was taking for bi-polar disorder gave her irresistible cravings for cookies and other snacks.
The blue and white sand thing was from Wham-O and it was called a Magic Window and my hippie aunt gave me one when I was like 8 and I miss it and I want it back.
And your cookies look scrumptious.
Baking cookies is a thing I don’t do, but I am so glad I stopped to read. All recipes should be storified this way!
I love me some coconut oil. My husband takes various meds for bipolar and they play merry hell with his triglycerides. We went on coconut oil (usually a spoonful in coffee) and his triglycerides plummeted by about 200 points. I’ll be pleased to make your cookies.
It was the Magic Window, if I recall correctly.
Hilarious! Laughing with a chest cold is um, interesting. But do post the recipe by weight, if you have it. This is because cup measuring is so fickle: if you pack, you get lots more than if you spoon and level, and then way less if you sift.
There’s a great baking book with lots of science of cooking called “BakeWise” by Shirley O. Corriher. Baking Fu will then be yours.
I believe in you too, Wil.
Made my day Wil, that was absolutely hilarious. You should make more recipes just because they’re fun to read
Ginger cookies next please–not the snaps, the ones that are kinda soft like snickerdoodles.
I am enjoying your blog very much. It is one of the highlights of my inbox! Thanks for the wide variety of reading material. I think I need to make cookies.
I second Cathy’s idea: We need a cookbook written by Wil Wheaton!
On another note: First you tell us to be a rebel and ignore baking wisdom by using a single bowl, and then you turn all mainstream, follow-the-crowd by telling us that we can’t ignore the wise writers of cookie recipes and just dump in all the chocolate chips at once…..highly illogical.
If you could post weight, that’d be great as it is the standard thing to do here in Europe (and saves you from cleaning yet other kitchen utensils because you can dump everything into the one bowl straight from the package).
Passive Aggressive Cooking with Wil would be hysterical YouTube fodder. Just FYI. Want a good scone recipe Wil?
You, sir, are a hypocrite. Yeah, you’re the big, bad anarchist when it comes to standing up to Big Bowl. You have the gall to call me a lemming and accuse me of caving to The Man because I WANT TO DO THINGS THE WAY THEY’VE ALWAYS BEEN DONE. So what happens three paragraphs later when you come face to face with Mr. Chips? Huh? What’s going on there Mr. Stick-It-To-The-Man? Now you’re dissing me when I throw in all my chips at once (I believe you poker players refer to it as going “all in”) because “literally every recipe tells you to put them in a little bit at a time”? Because now I DON’T WANT TO DO THINGS THE WAY THEY’VE ALWAYS BEEN DONE? Now who’s caving to The Man?
And I sicken you? I SICKEN YOU?!
You disgust me.
Good recipe, though.
That has to be one of the BEST recipes I’ve EVER read!
I made a thing last night – toffee. It requires a candy thermometer and is super advanced, guys, but I make fudge all the time, so I knew what I was doing.
See, when I make fudge, I’m usually (90% of the time) making a recipe up on the spot. Like, “Ok, let’s start with a vanilla fudge, and I have these ginger snaps, that’s cool, let’s crush them up and put some nutmeg in them, with a bit of cinnamon in the fudge itself, and oh! I bet coriander (the seed, not the leaf, you philistine) would be good in there too. And holy shit! I have lemon extract? When did I buy that? Let’s put that in the ginger snaps too. Crush that shit up…
And so on.
So last night, I decided to make a butter brickle fudge. Does anyone remember butter brickle? Spell-check sure as shit doesn’t remember brickle. It was a Breyer’s ice cream flavor, if I remember correctly, but I never see it anymore. Breyer’s used to be awesome, and now they don’t even make ice cream anymore. It’s “frozen dairy dessert”. Fuck that. Anyway, butter brickle was like a… buttery? (tough to describe) ice cream with bits of toffee. So I wanted to make a fudge like that. Easy enough, start with a vanilla base, use buttermilk instead of evaporated milk like I usually do, and maybe even add some 100% authentic genuine artificial butter flavor. Then I need to buy those crushed up Heath bars. What? They only sell the crushed up Heath bars with the chocolate still attached? Motherfuckers.
Fuck it! We’ll do it live. I’m making my own goddamn brickle. How hard can it be?
Okay, it’s 1 cup of sugar, 1 cup of butter, and 1/4 cup of water. Bring it to a boil, leave it on medium until it’s 300 degrees, then pour it into a pan.
Seriously? That’s it? I’ve been avoiding making toffee all this time because I thought it was harder than fudge. I mean, boiling sugar at 300 degrees ain’t nothin to fuck with, shit will burn you raw. But still…
Since I am literally incapable of following a recipe without adding my own twist, I added salt. Why wasn’t there salt in the recipe to begin with though? Toffee isn’t toffee if it doesn’t have that saltiness. Oh, they probably assumed I was using salted butter like a goddamn heathen. Ok, since I’m using the correct butter, let me add half a teaspoon of kosher salt. And what the hell, this needs vanilla. Half a teaspoon of that too.
Then, while it was heating to 300, I had to resist the urge that had risen up in every fiber of my being to add something else. “I could put some of that 100% authentic genuine artificial butter flavor in there.” No. Leave it. It’s just toffee. There are already two sticks of butter in it anyway.
It came out perfect. I let it cool in the freezer for about a half hour, then I crushed it up. Tonight, I’ll make the fudge. I’ll probably have 1 or 2 cups of crushed toffee left over, so I might have to make cookies too.
So anyway, thanks for the cookie recipe, Wil! I’m going to replace the cacao nibs with brickle though. Although cacao nibs, that gives me an idea for another fudge…
Million likes
“I don’t have any vices (coffee is a fundamental building block of life, and I will cut you I swear to god)”…
Thank you
Wil,
This post reminds me so much of the early days of wwdn and wwdn in exile that it makes my heart ache. As a long time reader of your blogs, I miss the gonzo journalism style of writing that you have all but abandoned lately. Granted, this post is not gonzo, but it none the less feels like you aloud yourself to be silly without worrying if it was good writing (which it was in my opinion) that just feels nostalgic. The only thing it’s missing is the requisite fart joke that no 12 year old boy can avoid. I’ll sum it up by saying there’s nothing about this post that I didn’t like. Now get off my lawn you crazy kid!
p.s.
The thing a day idea for December……..it’s working.
Dammit, I meant allowed, not aloud. Spelling matters. (Insert old man grumble noises). Stupid homonyms.
I’ve loved cacao nibs in recipes ever since I went to an exhibit at the Royal Botanical Gardens on the history of cacao and they taught classes on roasting your own nibs. It was amazing (and sooooo much work, even without the fermenting).
If you like recipes you can play with, my current favourite is this one:
Dundurn Castle Shortbread
1 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg yolk
2 cups all-purpose flour
In a medium mixing bowl, soften butter slightly by creaming then stir in sugar, salt and egg yolk.
Add flour, a little at a time until too stiff to work with a spoon. Turn out onto a floured board and knead lightly, blending in more flour until dough begins to crack.
Bake at 325 degrees until a pale golden brown.
The recipe itself is easy and super kid friendly, but baking them is tricky because the timing depends on how thick they are and what shape you make them, so you need to check them starting at like 10 minutes. These are amazing though because you can do things like make them filled with chocolate, or iced, or decorated, or plain, or maybe with chocolate chips (I’ve never tried). They have options.
Great post!
I’m not going to like to you, Marge, I was a little disappointed you didn’t at least list the gram weights as well as the measures. I’ve become a total convert to gram weights since I started baking using my bread machine – it’s so much more consistent! Though I’ll admit it’s a bit difficult to know what to do about things like eggs (2 eggs? XX g of eggs?) which is why I prefer recipes that let me know the options. Oh, and it’s good to know Tablespoons/cups of butter because the sticks have the measurements already on them. Other than that, grams are the way to go, IMO.
This may be the most passive-aggressive recipe I have ever seen. (Never even thought that there was such a thing). Hilarious and kudos to you, sir.
As a longtime baker (I prefer baking over cooking), this was THE best recipe I have ever read, very nice! My Dr has me on a strict no grains no sugar (except honey, stevia and nut flours) for autoimmune issues, but she also has me have coconut oil every day, so I put it in my tea. It is such a useful oil. Try pouring some melted coconut oil over a piece of salmon and baking it…yummy!
Thank you for a great post. I’ll wait for the cookbook!
And we can expect your cookbook when? The recipe looks great, although I will probably use a Danish dough whisk rather than my hands for the mixing, but the way it’s written is a joy to read. Thank you.
Seriously where can I get my hardback autographed copy of “Cooking for Nerds with Wil Wheaton” Goddammit man TAKE MY MONEY!!!
this recipe format made me so happy, that i don’t even need to make cookies now. big fun. maybe the thing you’ve ever written that i like the best. have a cookie.
I think a Wil Wheaton cookbook needs to happen. I will definitely be making these at some point. Thanks for the recipe. 🙂
Have you used coconut sugar? It is a great substitute for refined sugar. It has a lower glycemic response than refined sugar. And the flavor is very brown sugary. It is pretty much all I use now.
Great recipe. I made cookies with the Tollhouse recipe recently and they tasted too much like butter.
Best.Thing.Ever. How does this not yet have a bajillion views?
If you ever do a collection of written recipe stories, I shall buy it. I mean like, electronically. I’m too disorganised to order an actual book.
#onebowlrebelsFTW …but puts in all the chips at the same time mic drop
I made these cookies a couple of weeks ago – yum! I wasn’t sure which type of coconut oil you used, but I used the unrefined (aka more coconutty) type and it worked well. (I really enjoyed them, but my boyfriend liked them even more – he thought that they were better than most other chocolate chip cookies he had tried.)
Thanks for the recipe, Wil! I do a lot of baking, and have a feeling that these will make a reappearance in my kitchen at some point.