Hot (Mess) Cocoa Cookies

My sleigh swerved off course and landed in a sticky river of chocolate and marshmallows. That’s why I only have one “Hot (Mess) Cocoa Cookie” to show for it—one that’s intact, that is. The good news: the rest of the cookies in the batch are still super good, though most of them stuck to the cookie pan, oozed, and ended up in the Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks team members’ stomachs. Sure, there’s lots I could have done better/differently, but these hot mess cocoa cookies are perfectly perfect just scraped up from the baking sheet and eaten from a spatula. Or, just cram them into mugs, fill them with whipped cream, and warn (encourage) people to “spoon, not slurp.”

I tried to follow a recipe from the internet, I really did, but then I got carried away and ended up with this:

1 cup of butter, cut into tiny pieces (1/2 cup of salted butter—the other half unsalted—just because that’s what I had in the fridge)

1 cup of dark brown sugar, packed

½ cup of granulated sugar

1 tablespoon of Kahlúa

2 eggs

2 cups of all-purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

½ cup of dark, unsweetened, 100% dark chocolate cocoa powder

Most of a 10-ounce bag of extra-large dark chocolate chips (72% cacao)

1-2 cups of tiny marshmallows

Wrangle the butter and sugar into a bowl and beat, mash, and slather the mixture around until it’s creamy. Use a hand mixer, your hands, a spoon, a rubber spatula, and maybe another spoon.

Add the two eggs and Kahlúa.

In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa. Wrestle some more with the butter batter in the larger bowl, while adding the flour/cocoa mixture a third at a time.

Grab the nearest kraken with strong arms to help you blend in the chocolate chips and marshmallows.

Drop by rounded scoops of the spoon, with great hopes that these will hold their shape. Bake at 375 for 10 minutes.

Some might actually look like cookies when they come out of the oven. Take pictures immediately—of those cookies.

Results: These cookies taste like molten chocolate lava cake, a dense brownie, hot cocoa, rocky road ice cream. They are delicious!

Serve them with:

–The Sea of Swirly Twirly Gumdrops that Buddy the Elf passed through to get to New York

–Rivers of ribbon candy

–A closet full of wrapping paper

–Napkins made of your relatives’ Christmas newsletters

–A wheelbarrow filled with fluffy kitty cats wearing red and green bows

–A ladle and a fork

–Wooden clogs brimming with Who-ville pudding