Fiddlehead Kitchen

I had a craving for something REALLY chocolatey, and really why wouldn't I, why wouldn't you? So then I got an idea and started poking around in the kitchen to see what I had on hand. Who wants to make a grocery store run when they want chocolate now, the answer to that is nobody. Lucky me, I like to keep fairly well stocked on the necessities of baking. The result are these, Mocha Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies, they're crisp around the edges, soft and chewy in the center and very chocolatey with a nice mocha kick, just the way you want it. Let's get to it.

Makes about 3 dozen

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

¾ cup Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa Powder (You could use regular cocoa powder but then the cookies won't be nearly as dark or as special.)

1 tablespoon instant espresso

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon kosher salt

½ cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 sticks of unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips

Combine flour, cocoa powder, instant espresso powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl and set aside. Cream butter and both sugars together. Once creamed, add the eggs, beating until well combined then add the vanilla, beat to combine. Add in the flour mixture a little at a time until fully incorporated, scraping the sides of the bowl to make sure everything is getting well mixed. Mix in the chocolate chips with a rubber spatula, or I suppose you could use your mixer for this too, I just always mix chocolate chips in by hand. For the best results, scoop up cookies (get yourself a nice ice cream/cookie dough scoop, you'll never be sorry you did), and freeze them on a baking sheet before baking. This also works great because you can toss the frozen cookie dough balls in a freezer zip bag and just pop them in your freezer, freshly baked cookies whenever there's a need—lets face it, there's always a need for cookies.

Bake in a pre-heated oven. If you have a convection oven bake them at 325° for 12 minutes. For a regular oven, 350° for about 10 or 11 minutes. You don't want to over bake these. They'll look puffed and a bit under done but take them out and let them cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before moving them to a cooling rack, they'll deflate, leaving nice crisp edges and chewy centers, and who could be upset by that?