Ingredients:
2 cups flour
3/4 cup instant hot chocolate (cocoa) mix (I used this)
1 cup (unsalted) butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 cup dark brown sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
10 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
3/4 cup vanilla dehydrated mini marshmallows*
pinch salt
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350. Line 2-3 cookie sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment. In a large bowl, cream the butter, vanilla, and sugars for 5 minutes. Add the eggs, beat 5 minutes. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix until a very thick dough forms. Fold in the chips and marshmallows. Refrigerate, covered, 30 minutes.
Form cookies by dropping 1 heaping tablespoon of dough two inches apart. I used this scoop. sprinkle with additional marshmallows if desired.
Flatten slightly then bake until light brown, about 14-16 minutes. They may look slightly shiny in the middle but the bottoms and edges should be solid. Slide them out on the baking mat on to a cooling rack and allow them to cool 5 minutes on the baking mat/parchment on the wire rack before removing them to cool directly on the wire rack. Cool completely before serving.
*I bought a bulk bag of these at a large “old fashioned” candy store/produce market. I’ve oddly seen them a lot at Amish markets.
Yield: about 2 1/2-3 dozen cookies
My thoughts:
It may be March but it is still quite cold! Our house has a tendency to be cool (even at times, cold) on the first floor where we spend most of our time and then positively boiling in the second floor at night when the weather is cold but sunny. I’ve found the best way to avoid this is to bake something.
My husband bought me an industrial-sized tub of Galaxy last year which was tasty but then he found a fancy super dark hot chocolate that I like more for straight drinking leaving me with a seriously overwhelming amount of hot chocolate mix in the house. I also had a bag of dehydrated marshmallows I picked up on a road trip so it seemed fated to make something hot chocolate inspired.
I strayed a bit from my usual chocolate chip cookie technique: I really beat the butter and eggs until they were smooth and quite soft and then I refrigerated the dough for half an hour. Since the marshmallows were dehydrated, I wanted to give them time and liquid to help them soften so it wouldn’t be like eating crunchy bits of styrofoam.
The final cookie really does taste like hot chocolate (or cocoa!) in cookie form! There is a very creamy chocolate taste in the cookie, punctuated by the dark chocolate chips and the texture is slightly chewy from the marshmallows.
