Crispy Cocoa Cookies

I got a new recipe book titled, “Baking with Julia” for Christmas and I would like to bake my way through it. Not to copy the Julie from the movie, Julie and Julia, but to honestly just learn how to bake. So for my first documented recipe (I made the Hungarian Shortbread for Christmas but didn’t take any photos) I chose Crispy Cocoa Cookies. I chose them for two reasons, one: I wanted to make a cookie and two: it was one of the only recipes in the book that I already had all of the ingredients for. Like I said before, I’m a compulsive baker.

So here goes…

Creaming the butter, sugar and cocoa…

Flour mixture…

Combining the two. This is where my daughter developed an unrational fear of the hand mixer (she’s four months old) so I had to stop and calm her down. It was either a fear of the mixer or a dislike for the cocoa smell. I refuse to believe it was the latter.

I didn’t have milk that the recipe called for so I had to use heavy whipping cream. I figured it could only make the cookies better. More fat = better taste, right?

Rolling out the dough. I didn’t have a circle cookie cutter, like the recipe called for so I used a heart one that was my great-grandmothers. She said to cook them for 10-12 minutes. I always air on the side of undercooking with cookies because I like them softer. I hate when the bottom burns. I found that 9 1/2 – 10 minutes was perfect for these guys. Because they are SO thin, it was easy to over-bake them.

And… the finished product:

These little cookies are delish! They taste so light that you can eat about ten before realizing that you need to stop. Definitely a do-over. YUM.

Recipe: Crispy Cocoa Cookies from Baking with Julia by Dorie Greenspan, pages 312-313