Adorable Hot Cocoa Cookies
Today’s hot chocolate inspired recipe starts with a dense, fudgy, melt-in-your mouth chocolate cookie borrowed from my wintery chocolate crinkle cookies. It’s the perfect fudgy base our hot chocolate toppings.
4 things to love about these cookies:
No hot cocoa mix or artificial flavors: just real cocoa, real sugar, and real vanilla–the way hot chocolate should be made! Sparkly sugar coating gives a wintery look and keeps the chocolate from being too dark. Easy 2-ingredient chocolate ganache is made in the microwave–no need to heat up the stove. So unique and festive! I think you’re really going to love them.
What You Need
All of the ingredients in today’s recipe are pantry staples, but let’s go over a few you might have questions about before we get started.
Cocoa powder. I recommend natural cocoa here for the most authentic flavor, though you could use Dutch process if you prefer. Dutch process cocoa will add a more intense flavor. Vanilla. Yes, even though these are hot chocolate cookies, we’re still adding vanilla extract! I do this in my hot chocolate recipe too. Sugar. I like using a combination of brown and granulated sugar in my chocolate desserts (like my homemade brownies!) for depth of flavor and moisture. Stick with light brown sugar here, as dark brown could make the cookies too rich. Marshmallows. I use regular size marshmallows and cut them in half before pressing them into the baked cookies. If you only have mini marshmallows, those could probably work too, though they may not stick as nicely since you wouldn’t be cutting them. You could also substitute homemade marshmallows or peppermint marshmallows. Milk chocolate chips. While I typically don’t make my chocolate ganache with chocolate chips, it works just fine here. I prefer milk chocolate because anything else seemed a bit too dark, and hot chocolate is usually well tempered with milk anyway, so milk just worked best. If you’d prefer to use semisweet or dark chocolate instead, you certainly can.
SAM’S TIP: Don’t add your dry ingredients all at once! Adding them gradually will make combining the dough much easier and will result in a more manageable dough. Remember, this is just an overview of the ingredients I used and why. For the full recipe please scroll down to the bottom of the post!
How to Make Hot Chocolate Cookies
Make the Dough
Bake/Assemble
SAM’S TIP: Coating the marshmallow in ganache keeps it fresh! I like to leave a little bit of the marshmallow peeking through (just so you know it’s under there!), but try to cover most of it so it doesn’t become stale. I hope you enjoy these cozy cookies! They’d be the perfect treat to make on a snow day ❄️ Enjoy! Let’s bake together! Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified of all the newest recipes, and find all of my free recipe tutorials on YouTube 💜
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