Chocolate Sugar Cookie Bites

Chocolate Sugar Cookie Bites
(*Original recipe called Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies)
From Martha Stewart Cookies or MarthaStewart.com
Makes 8

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup good-quality unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/2 cup vegetable shortening, substitute 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1 large egg
1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1 cup frosting (recipe follows)


1. Preheat oven to 375. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside.
2. Put butter and sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Mix on medium-high speed until pale and fluffy. Mix in shortening (or additional butter). Add egg and vanilla; mix until creamy. Reduce speed to low. Gradually add flour mixture, and mix until just combined.
3. Using a 2 1/2-inch ice cream scoop, drop dough onto baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing about 4 inches apart. Bake until edges are firm, 18 to 20 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container up to 2 days.

(This method makes 8 giant cookies. I used a 1 1/2-inch cookie scoop and got 30 cookies out of it. For smaller cookies, reduce cooking time down to 11-12 minutes. I also used a baking mat, which could have been the reason for my cookies not spreading. I suggest using the advised parchment paper instead.)

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Frosting:
From Allrecipes.com

2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/4 cup shortening
2 tablespoons and 1-1/2 teaspoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I substituted almond extract instead)
food coloring
Sprinkles (optional)

1. In a large bowl, cream together the confectioners' sugar and shortening until smooth. Gradually mix in the milk and vanilla with an electric mixer until smooth and stiff, about 5 minutes. Color with food coloring if desired.
2. Spread on cooled cookies and top with sprinkles, if using. Let icing set before storing, about 1 hour.

(I made half the original recipe and ended up with 1 1/2 cups of frosting and still had extra left over, so find some other stuff to ice cause this icing's too good to go to waste!)

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It's holiday time! I love holidays! Well, I love holidays I can bake themed treats for. And Valentine's Day is just such a holiday! I've been busy for the past 2 days baking and icing cookies. I knew I wanted to make my usual sugar cookies (which will be featured in part 2 of my 2-part Valentine's series), but I wanted to make something a little different as well. I felt I needed something chocolate to go with them as well, because what's Valentine's Day without chocolate? So I checked back in with Martha for the perfect chocolate cookie recipe to go with my sugar cookies. I found a recipe for Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies in the Cookies book (page 163) that sounded pretty good. And for the first time in a very long time, I actually had all my ingredients already on hand, so I didn't have to make a grocery store run! Certainly that was a sign that this was going to be a great idea!



Being the "giant" cookies that they claim to be, the recipe is only supposed to make 8 cookies. I needed a bit more than 8 cookies if I was going to be splitting my batch up between presents for my boyfriend and cookies to share at work, so I decided I wouldn't make them quite so giant. Plus the fact that the recipe says to use a 2 1/2-inch ice cream scoop to make them giant, and I don't have a scoop anywhere near that size. I decided to use my normal 1-inch scoop that I use for all my other cookies, thinking that once in the oven, the cookies would spread to an average size. So I scooped out my dough onto my baking sheets and popped them in the oven for about 16 minutes, thinking that the 18 minutes the giant cookies need to bake for might be a bit too long for my smaller size.

When my timer went off, I opened the oven up to take out my cookies and was slightly surprised. I knew I wasn't going to end up with "giant" cookies, but I wasn't really expecting the "dwarf" cookies I got. They were tiny! They hadn't really spread in the oven at all. I started with a 1-inch ball of dough, and ended up with a 1 1/2-inch cookie. (the picture above is the cookie before it went into the oven, but they looked pretty much the same coming out.) No way could these ever be called Giant Chocolate Sugar Cookies. They could barely even be called just Chocolate Sugar Cookies. They were the bite-sized babies of the Chocolate Sugar Cookies. So they became Chocolate Sugar Cookie Bites.

Martha claims that the "bold chocolate flavor says it all" for these cookies and no frosting is needed, but I felt they were lacking a little something. So I decided to frost them anyway. I searched the internet for a good sugar cookie frosting recipe and came across this one from Allrecipes.com. It seemed easy enough, and had gotten a lot of really good reviews, so I gave it a shot. I halved the recipe and added in almond extract instead of vanilla along with red food coloring to make it a dark pink color. I spread a mound of icing over the tops of each cookie and then added sprinkles to the top of each to give it a pretty pink festive look. They turned out pretty well, other than being slightly small. The cookie part is a little dry, and I'm not sure if that's from over baking or if it's just how the cookie is supposed to be since it's under the "crumbly and sandy" portion of the Cookie book, but they have a good chocolatey flavor to them. The icing is really good. It reminds me a lot of my aunt's icing for her sugar cookies she makes at Christmas. They're the ones my family fights over. I just hope my boyfriend and everyone at work enjoys them!
Stay tuned for part 2: Conversation Heart Sugar Cookies!