My Annual Holiday Baking Extravaganza Part Two (a series...with recipes!)

In Which It Is Determined That The Only Thing Better Than a Sugar Cookie Is A Chocolate Sugar Cookie

Apologies again for my rudimentary icing skills here…but you get the idea.

Because, duh.

EXCEPT. There are an awful lot of chocolate sugar cookie recipes out there that are kinda…meh. It’s the worst kind of disappointment.

But I came across a recipe at The Kitchn, and read through it thinking, oh hey. This is a little different….and ran up against the classic cooking-in-a-small-town dilemma of ingredients.

Don’t worry - full recipe will be linked below!

I did not have any dutched cocoa. Or espresso powder (is this a thing? or is it just coffee, pounded into dust?). And I don’t even know what black cocoa powder is. But one of the things I like about the Kitchn (and others) is that they have you covered here, explaining Dutch cocoa, and black cocoa, and then finally admitting that well, you can just use Dutch cocoa.

And the cookies - wow. The dough is chocolatey and delish, and firms up quite hard in the fridge. It also gets pretty sticky as it gets to room temp, so save yourself some time and mess and roll it between wax paper or parchment. Holds shapes really well, although I am not sure you can use a stamp - it seems too sticky for that. The baked cookie tastes amazing on its own, so requires very little in terms of icing to complement it (my royal icing layer is quite thin).

And I actually overbaked a sheet of these…and turned them into a perfect chocolate digestive biscuit. They still tasted great, and had that snap that everyone is inexplicably looking for on the Great British Baking Show.

The recipe for chocolate sugar cookies can be found here.