Michel Cluizel Baking Chips Test 1

Before 2018 was over, I was contacted by the marketing folks at Chocolat Michel Cluizel about some of their new products. Of course, given our previous experience with their bars, I said yes. I was sent two small bags of their baking chips so I'm going to make the same cookies twice using each variety of chips once to compare them. I'm going to start with the 51% chips that are a brand new product now yet available on their website but it is basically this Plantation Riachuelo bar in baking chip form! I was sent 5.35 ounces of these chips for free in exchange for a fair and honest article here on this blog; no other form of compensation was received.

51% Plantation Riachuelo Baking Chips

If I'd been sent the normal 10-11 ounces of the chips, I would have made my oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. However I needed a recipe that called for fewer chips so I used a low-fat basic cookie recipe I have that I've used with chocolate or butterscotch chips. The focus is on letting the chips be the fats in the cookie and letting their flavor shine out. Because there is a lot of sweetness in the recipe I find it works best with darker chocolate chips.

For many folks my basic cookies may seem odd. They tend to be puffy not flat, chewy not crisp, but growing up with a mother who had heart disease this is how I learned to bake. If you like the more traditional fat amount or crisp cookies, this is not the recipe you want to try out.

Basic Low-Fat Cookie Dough with Baking Chips
By TammyJo Eckhart

Ingredients:
3/4 C Unsweetened Applesauce
1 tsp Real Vanilla
6 T Liquid Egg Whites
1/2 C tap water with 2 tsp baking soda
1/4 C Splenda Sugar Blend
1/4 C Brown Sugar
3.5 C Whole Wheat Flour
1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt (depending on the chips you use and your taste)
5-6 ounces Dark Chocolate Chips

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 325°F and line two cookies sheets with parchment paper.

2. Using a stand alone mixer, beat together all of the "wet" ingredients.

3. Add in salt and sugars and mix well.

4. Mix in Flour until a soft but not runny dough is formed; it should stick to the beater without fall off of it.

5. Stir by hand or use the mixer to blend in the chips until they are everywhere. Yes, there will seem like fewer chips than your traditional chocolate chip recipe because there are. This is a lower-fat cookie and chips are where the most fat can be cut!

6. Using a regular sized spoon like you might use for a meal, drop by spoonfuls onto the parchment paper lined cookie sheets. You can get 15 cookies per sheet because these are doughy and lake butter, they will not spread out but upward. The recipe should yield between 48 and 60 cookies depending on how large you make them.

7. Bake for 10-11 minutes depending on how golden you like your cookies.

8. Simply slide the parchment paper from the cookie sheet onto a table or counter top and let cool. How long? That's a matter of your preference but at least 5 minutes so you don't burn your mouth. Warning the Cookies may stick a bit to the paper so peel them off and place on a cooling rack to finish cooling if you like cool chocolate chip cookies.

How did these 51% Plantation Riachuelo Baking Chips hold up to my basic cookie dough recipe?

The chips are slightly sweeter than I expected but they offered these delightful bursts of chocolate when I encountered them in each fluffy cookie. The chips sweetness has a caramel like essence and almost a weak spiciness as promised on the bag they were sent in; I didn't get the licorice or berries in the cookie but I did in one of the chips I tried solo. While the chips themselves are not the traditional baking chip shape, these are flatter, they still held their shapes well and if you eat the cookies after 10 minutes, they will melt as you bite into them.

I give these baking chips Sacrament Status here on The Chocolate Cult.