Soft & Chewy Chocolate Drops with Hot Cocoa Frosting - Guest Post!

Today's post is written by my good friend Heather.  Heather and I were coworkers at my first "real" job, and then neighbors for two years.  Heather is a die-hard-"Michigander" (Go Blue!) and is an excellent running buddy.  She also makes the BEST Heath Bar Angel Food cake you will ever eat, so hopefully I will get her to share that one day, too.  I happen to know that Heather brought these into work and they were a huge hit.  One coworker who avoids butter like the plague couldn't even resist!  Thank you for sharing your cookies, Heather!!

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Double-chocolate soft & chewy cookies

I've been craving a chocolate cookie and had one in mind that my mom made once years ago.  She couldn't find the recipe so I used the one on the back of the Bakers Unsweetened baking chocolate box.  You will need:

4 squares Bakers' Unsweetened Chocolate
3/4 cup butter (1.5 sticks)
2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2.5 cups flour

Dough with flour added

Heat oven to 350F.  Microwave unsweetened chocolate and butter in large bowl on high for 2 minutes (or until butter is melted - mine took more like 3 minutes).  Stir until chocolate is completely melted.  Add sugar and mix well.  Blend in eggs and vanilla.  Stir in flour.  (Do not over mix).  Refrigerate 1 hour or until dough is easy to handle.  (I was impatient and just refrigerated for 20-30 minutes.)

Shape into 1-inch balls (highly recommended - they keep their shape so just dropping them on the baking sheet makes them look yucky - too ugly to take to work!)

Balls of cookie dough

Bake 8 minutes or just until set (I let mine bake for 10 - they didn't look done after 8 minutes).  Let stand on baking sheet for 1 minute (if you don't wait the bottom falls out - at least that's what happened to me!  I'm going to fill it with frosting.)  Transfer to wire rack to cool completely.  This yields 5 dozen cookies (I got 61).

Baked cookies

Frosting!

I planned on using the recipe on the back of Hershey's Unsweetened cocoa but didn't think I had enough powdered sugar so I used hot cocoa mix that's mostly powdered sugar.

Hot Cocoa Frosting

1/4 cup of butter (1/2 stick)
Splash of milk (I used roughly half of a 1/3 cup)
1 3/4 cups hot cocoa mix (see below for recipe)

Melt butter.  Add hot cocoa mix and milk.  I mixed with a fork and it was really lumpy so I brought out my mixer to smooth it out a bit.  Still wasn't super smooth (see below).  The taste makes up for the lumps! :)

Lumpy but delicious frosting

Cocoa Mix (makes a whole bunch!!)

11 oz. jar non-dairy creamer
3 cups plus a little powdered sugar
2 cups Nestle Quick
1 1/3 cups non-fat dry powdered milk (enough for a quart of "milk")

Mix all ingredients together and store in an air tight container.  (Use 4 heaping tablespoons per cup of boiling water for actual cocoa.)