ChOcolate Sugar Cookies

I don’t like sugar cookies, but I like chocolate. So when I want cookies to decorate I make these or my favorite shortbread cookies. Alright. Let’s make cookies together.

Get all of your ingredients out. It REALLY helps in any recipe to measure and set out all of your ingredients first, that way as you read the recipe you can get through it quickly and easily without stressing if you just read the right thing.
2 1/2 cups Flour
1/3 cup plus 2 Tablespoons cocoa Powder
1/2 teaspoon Salt
2 sticks (1 cup) room temperature Butter
1 teaspoon Baking Powder
1/2 cup packed Brown Sugar
3/4 cup Granulated Sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons Vanilla

In a medium sized bowl, dump your flour, baking powder, salt and cocoa powder. Whisk to mix thoroughly.

In a larger bowl, or the bowl of a stand mixer, dump your butter and both sugars. Beat until creamy on medium speed.

Add your egg and vanilla. Beat again until mixed in.

Pour in 1/3 of your flour mixture. Beat slowly to incorporate.

Again.

And last third.

Dump it out onto a piece of parchment paper.

We want to compact the dough so that it’s a solid mass.

There. And the dough isn’t terribly messy so don’t flour your hands.

Break it into two pieces.

Grab some plastic wrap and flatten one half into a flat rectangular-ish oval. Cover in plastic wrap.

Repeat with the other half.

Chill for 20 min.

Take out your chilled dough and sandwich it between a piece of parchment paper (on the bottom) and plastic wrap (on the top).

Roll it out to about 1/4 inch thick.

I got these even dough bands on amazon and they’re so great for making uniform cookies.

Yay. Time to cut out some cookies.

Its definitely easiest to pull the excess dough away first and then use a spatula to lift the cookies off the parchment and onto a baking sheet.

[keep re-chilling and re-rolling the scraps until you’ve used all the dough]

If you didn’t take a really long time to roll out and cut them, you can pop them in the oven immediately. But if you lolly-gagged and they got warm, chill them again for about 10 min. I usually do anyway while the oven heats up. 350°.

Bake for 11 minutes. Cool 10 minutes on the pan and ten minutes on a wire rack.

One batch made me 12 of these rather large circles and 8 normal sized squares.

Now decorate. Or eat them as is. They are basically like a brownie in a cookie.

How will you decorate them?