Chocolate Fudge Cookies - A Sweet Beginning for a New Year

In the years when I bought cook books like a woman possessed I bought one called The Colossal Cookie Cookbook. It sat among the other books and I always felt a thrill of joy seeing on my shelf anticipating the wonderful cookies I would make from it. I guess we get caught up in the anticipating and forget to actually make time to really use the books and the treasure of recipes within. I did make a recipe or two but then got caught up in other stuff and the book sat on the shelf, though not gathering dust because I am devoted to my books and I like to take good care of them :)

Sometime around November I saw a frenzy across Facebook where everyone seemed to be baking cookies. I wanted to bake cookies too! I surfed the net, like we automatically do these days, and after browsing quite a few sites I suddenly ground to a halt. What was I doing?! I have enough cookbooks to start my own little library - what was I doing searching on the net?

I pulled out The Colossal Cookie Cookbook and, finally made cookies from the book again. I'd shopped over the previous months and had gathered a decent hoard of cookie making ingredients in my pantry. So now there was no excuse left. Chocolate Fudge Cookies were zeroed in upon and what a success they turned out to be!

Chocolate Fudge Cookies

200gms dark cooking chocolate. I used Morde's
1 1/4 cup white flour
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder. I used Hintz
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
110 gms butter.
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
white chocolate for decoration

Set your oven to 180C and let it preheat.

Melt the cooking chocolate and set aside to cool. You can use a microwave like I did, or a double boiler.

In a clean bowl sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and the salt together.

In a separate bowl cream the sugar with the butter till it's well blended and fluffy. Add the eggs and the vanilla and beat further. You can use an electric hand blender for this. I plan to use my stand mixer the next time and make a double batch.

Pour in the cooled melted chocolate and whisk till it's all mixed in well. Now add the sifted dry ingredients in small quantities and incorporate. The dry ingredients will fly around so do this stage with a spatula or large spoon. You should have a smooth thick batter once everything is mixed in well. Give it a whizz with the electric beater for a minute and you're ready to bake the cookies.

Take two cookie sheets and line with baking parchment. Take a generous scoop of the cookie batter in a tablespoon and drop onto the parchment. Line up the scoops of batter leaving a couple of inches of space between the cookies. They will spread as they bake. You can use a piping bag to make it easier to drop the cookie batter onto the parchment. Use a plain nozzle, the cookies will not hold any fancy shapes.

Bake the cookies in your preheated oven for approximately 18 minutes. Let them cool on the parchment for a minute before you put them on a cooling rack to cool and harden. Don't worry if your cookies seem soft when you remove them from the oven.

Once the cookies have cooled you can decorate them. Melt white chocolate in a bowl and dip a fork into the melted chocolate and drizzle over the cookies. I think melted dark chocolate will also work quite well.

This recipe yielded 16 large cookies. Make a double batch and send some over to your BFF. Spread the love!

Now make a mug of coffee, pick up a few Chocolate Fudge Cookies, grab the book you're reading and settle down in your favourite chair for some delicious me time.