After deciding not to do anything special for Valentine’s Day I changed my mind and ended up wanting to cook dinner with Miles. I spent hours working on the menu the night before and had everything figured out: Steaks over a bed of spinach and feta cheese, orzo on the size and chocolate lava cakes for dessert.So on Valentine’s Day I realized that I didn't really want to make chocolate lava cakes for dessert. While I love me some lava cakes I have made them a couple of times recently and they just didn't feel like having them again. So off to the internet I went looking for a new dessert idea. Miles had asked for chocolate so chocolate he was going to get. I finally stumbled across these cookies (from Martha Stewart) and with a few edits I had my recipe. I cut it in half and used a Splenda/sugar combo. I also used dark chocolate instead of the milk chocolate that was in the original recipe. Miles loves mint so a little mint extract and these cookies went from chocolate to minty chocolate heaven.
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
- 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon coarse salt
- 2 ounces semi sweet chocolate chips (I used Ghirardelli)
- 2 ounces dark chocolate (I used Ghirardelli Twilight Delight 72%) cut into 1/4-inch chunks
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter (I used Land -o - Lakes Light butter)
- 1/2 cups sugar
- 4 packets of Splenda
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon mint extract
Directions:
- Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside. Melt 2 ounces chocolate chips with the butter in a small heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water; let cool slightly.
- Put chocolate mixture, sugar, eggs, and vanilla in the bowl and whisk gently until combined. Gradually mix in flour mixture. Fold in chocolate chunks.
- Refrigerate dough for 1-2 hours.
- Using a spoon, drop dough onto parchment-lined baking sheets, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake until cookies are puffy and surfaces crack, about 13 minutes (cookies should be soft). Let cool. Cookies will flatten out as they cool.
