The Great Big Wonder

It’s finally autumn. Autumn may be my second favorite season, but with it comes Halloween…my favorite holiday.

I wanted to make something fun for Halloween. Mostly because I’m trying to rekindle my love for baking and cooking. But also because I bought this decorative pumpkin board from Target and had to use it to justify the purchase. So without further ado, here are my Halloween-inspired cookies!

I found a few chocolate chip cookie recipes on Pinterest and modified them a bit to make my own. I wish I could just produce a cookie recipe from thin air but alas, I cannot. I made two versions of the cookies, I used the same dough for both but used different candies in the batters. You can do the same or create your own!

What you need: 

2 cups of flour (I use King Arthur)

2/3 cups of Hershey’s 100% Cacao Natural Unsweetened Powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup of softened butter

1 cup of granulated sugar

2/3 cups of firmly packed dark brown sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla

Frozen chocolate chips and candies of your choice. I used: Hershey’s milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, and Reese’s baking cups and baking pieces mix. I don’t have an amount for this because it’s completely subjective. Freeze your chocolate chips so they hold up better in the oven.

Time to Bake: 

1. Preheat your oven to 350F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl cream the butter and sugars together until they are light in color.
3. Add the vanilla and eggs and beat well.
4. Slowly add the flour, baking soda, salt, and cacao to the mixture. Beat until combined.
5. Add your chocolate chips. At this point, if you’d like to have two separate cookies set one half of your dough aside. Fold in about half of the chocolate chips that you are using into the dough, and set the other half in a small bowl.
6. Form balls of dough using a 2 tbsp scoop. Dipp your cookie ball into the bowl of chocolates and then place on the baking sheet candy side up. This will give you the best display of color on your cookies.
7. Bake for 8-12 minutes. Chocolate cookies don’t really give a visual on when they’re done. To check I sacrifice one cookie to the cookies Gods and split one of the cookies open on the baking sheet and to check the doneness.  8 minutes will get you more gooey cookies, 12 minutes will get you crispy cookies verging on the edge of burnt. Every oven is different, so keep an eye on the cookies, and pull them out when you’ve reached your own desired doneness.
8. Let cool for two minutes before moving to a cooling rack to avoid breakage.
9. Enjoy!

PS. The pumpkin board I got from Target was $3 in the tantalizing bargain section at the entrance to the store. Most of my baking stuff I find there!