Gourmet Chocolate Mocha Cookies

Close your eyes and imagine-taste deep-dark decadent chocolate cookies laced with espresso, then imagine-taste deeper, bits of melty chocolate inside. It's a chocolate lover's dream cookie, right? It's also one of my oldest cookie recipes and a "must-make" for a Christmas cookie tray and all the chocolate lovers in your life. If you crave chocolate cookies that are almost like brownie cookies or fudge cookies or flourless chocolate cookies, here you go, get to baking!

Super Chocolate-y, Contains Almost 1.5 Pounds of Chocolate! Crackly on Top, Chewy Inside. Delicious with Cold Milk. Freezes Beautifully.

~ Skip Straight to the Recipe ~

Lame Chocolate Jokes.

PROBLEM: How do you get two pounds of chocolate home without it melting? SOLUTION: Eat it in the car.

NUTRITION LOGIC: Chocolate comes from cocoa beans. Sugar comes from sugar cane and sugar beets. Beans, sugar cane and beets are vegetables. Therefore chocolate is a vegetable and a healthful diet should include 6 – 8 servings a day.

TWELVE STEPS: Why isn’t there a Chocoholics Anonymous organization? Because no one wants to quit.

Okay, okay, the jokes are pretty lame but if you’re a chocolate fiend, read on for you may have just discovered your favorite cookie.

Gourmet Chocolate Mocha Cookies are thick with chocolate, butter and eggs and have the consistency of mini flourless chocolate cakes. Coffee adds depth, vanilla adds sweetness. If you need a chocolate fix every day, you’ll make these year-round.

Not Lame: Three Kinds of Chocolate

Gourmet Chocolate Mocha Cookies use three different kinds of chocolate. But no worries, this is grocery-store chocolate that's easy to find in regular stores without breaking the budget. Check your pantry, you may already have all three chocolates!

• UNSWEETENED BAKING CHOCOLATE This chocolate comes in squares, some times it's just called "baking chocolate". The brand I see most often is "Baker's Chocolate".
• SEMI-SWEET CHOCOLATE CHIPS Here I use just regular chocolate chips, nothing fancy. Given the choice, though, I do pull Hershey's Special Dark chocolate chips off the shelf. I've long loved and recommended Hershey's Special Dark unsweetened cocoa powder but now that there are chocolate chips too? Yes! Both Special Dark products add a chocolate intensity that I don't taste in other products, even expensive chocolate. But really, the Special Dark chips aren't required, just use the chips you have on hand.
• MINI SEMI-SWEET CHOCOLATE CHIPS You can substitute regular size chocolate chips for the mini chips but I especially like the mini chocolate chips from Nestle because they melt just a little bit in the warm batter and this creates tiny burst of dense chocolate inside the cookies.

What Does "Mocha" Mean, Anyway?

Is mocha just another word for chocolate? Does mocha mean chocolate mixed with coffee?

Ha! No wonder it's confusing. Here's what I learned.

• Mocha = A type of coffee made from a specific bean.
• Mocha = A coffee drink which combines coffee with chocolate.
• Mocha = A port in the country of Yemen.
• Mocha = A soft leather made from sheepskin.
• Mocha = All of the above.

Bingo! "All of the above" is the correct answer. That said, we'll ignore the last three in our chocolate-cookie context.

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Just updated! First published way back in 2003.

GOURMET CHOCOLATE MOCHA COOKIES

Mix: 15 minutes
Rest, shape and bake: 90 minutes
Makes 4-1/2 dozen medium cookies

CHOCOLATE MIXTURE
• 4 ounces (113g) unsweetened baking chocolate such as Baker's
• 1-1/2 cups (280g) semi-sweet chocolate chips, preferably dark chocolate
• 1/2 cup (1 stick/112g) butter

FLOUR MIXTURE
• 1/2 cup flour, fluffed to aerate before measuring or 62g
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon table salt (omit if using salted butter)

COOKIE "BATTER"
• 4 large eggs
• 1-1/2 cups (300g) sugar
• 1-1/2 tablespoons instant espresso powder or instant coffee granules
• 2 teaspoons vanilla

FOLD IN
• Chocolate Mixture
• Flour Mixture
• 1-1/2 cups (255g) semi-sweet chocolate chips, preferably mini chips

Heat oven to 350F/180C.

CHOCOLATE MIXTURE In a medium saucepan, slowly melt unsweetened chocolate, the first 1-1/2 cups chocolate chips and butter over low heat until it's smooth, stirring occasionally, not allowing the mixture to bubble. Let it cool while continuing.

FLOUR MIXTURE Separately, stir together the dry ingredients.

EGG MIXTURE In a large mixing bowl, use an electric mixer to beat the eggs, sugar, espresso powder and vanilla until the eggs turn pale and yellow and almost ropey, this takes several minutes.

COMBINE While the Chocolate Mixture is still warm, use a spatula fold it into the Egg Mixture, then fold in the Flour Mixture. Stir in the second 1-1/2 cups chocolate chips. The mixture will be more "batter" than "dough" but will thicken somewhat during as it rests.

REST Let the batter stand for 15 minutes, it'll thicken slightly.

BAKE Line baking sheets with parchment. To form the cookies, use two spoons (one to scoop and one to scrape) to arrange a scant tablespoon batter (less for smaller cookies ) on a baking sheet, about twelve cookies per sheet to allow for spreading. Use the tip of one of the spoons to neaten up and round out the edges.

Bake 8 – 10 minutes until puffed and shiny and cracked on top. Do not overbake. Let cool 5 minutes, then transfer to a paper towel or a cooling rack with a thin metal spatula.

STORE Once fully cool, arrange in cookie tins, using wax paper to separate the layers.

ALANNA's TIPS The mini chips melt a bit when folded into the warm batter, creating soft concentrations of chocolate throughout. Watch the timer on the first batch for baking time is critical: too little and the cookies will be soft and fall apart, too long and they dry out. In my oven with standard baking sheets, the timing is consistently 8 minutes plus 1 or some times 2 minutes to finish. But I've tested these with other baking sheets and man, the variations are huge. A non-stick cookie sheet takes 9 minutes. An Airbake cookie sheet with a silicone mat takes 14 minutes or with parchment 11 minutes! For a cookie version of a frozen Snickers bar (addictively delicious but hidden from sight) store these cookies in the freezer!

NUTRITION INFORMATION Per Cookie: 81 Calories; 4g Tot Fat; 3g Sat Fat; 20mg Cholesterol; 22mg Sodium; 10g Carb; 1g Fiber; 8g Sugar; 1g Protein. WEIGHT WATCHERS Old Points 2 & PointsPlus 2 & SmartPoints 4 & Freestyle 4 & myWW green 4 & blue 4 & purple 4

Adapted from Gourmet Magazine, October 1991, from Gourmet's decades-long collection of 50 Baking Favorites

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.

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