Amanda's Favorite Cookies

     This post is exactly what it claims to be: the recipe for Amanda's favorite cookies. I don't make them that often because I prefer drop cookies to cutout cookies, but sometimes she gets to pestering me about it and won't stop until I make them. So I figured I'd share them with you! They're kind of a strange cookie: chocolatey through and through, but very light and flaky in texture, almost closer to a pastry than a cookie. 

     The original recipe is out of a book my friend Elise gave me once (it's this one right here, if you're curious). They're called "pressed chocolate cookies" in the book, but I always call them chocolate envelopes, because that's more descriptive. Read on and I'll show you how I make them! 

     First up, gather your ingredients. 

     You'll need:

     1 1/3 cups flour
     2 tablespoons cocoa powder
     2/3 cup softened butter
     3/4 cup sugar
     1 egg yolk
     chocolate discs, chunks, or whatever else you want to cram inside the cookies

     First up, preheat the oven to 375 degrees, and grease a baking sheet with butter or cooking spray. Then mix the flour and cocoa together in a medium bowl. In another bowl, a large one this time, beat together the sugar and butter, then add in the egg yolk and beat some more. When it's all combined, add the dry ingredients from the medium bowl to the large bowl and beat until everything is nicely mixed up. The dough will look really crumbly. Like this!  

     Now, the original recipe says to refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, but I think they put that in there just to screw with everybody. Don't do that. This dough is so crumbly and dry that if you chill it, it will never, ever roll out without cracking apart. You have to do the opposite and warm it up a bit by kneading it and squishing it with your hands until it starts to hold together. Once it holds its shape, throw down some flour and start rolling it out. It's very important to also flour your rolling pin, because the dough can start to pull up and tear if you're not very gentle with it. It's kind of a pain in the tush, but suffering makes the cookies taste better. Once the dough is rolled out pretty thin (1/8 of an inch if you can get it there, thicker if you get tired of rolling and decide where it's at is good enough), cut a whole bunch of circles out with the cookie cutter/glass of your choice. I use a little biscuit cutter. 

See how the dough stuck to the counter a little in the missing cookie's spot? Flour, flour, flour your surfaces, friends. Don't be like me! 

     Once they're all cut out, it's assembly time! Just place your chocolate disc (or whatever else you're using) in the center, put another cut-out on top, then press the edges together with a fork to seal them. 

     Plop 'em on the prepared baking sheet and bake them for about 8 minutes. I always start with 7 and then keep a close eye on them, because I like my cookies to essentially just be heated-up dough, but if you like a crisper cookie, let them go a little longer. When they've spread out just a bit and the edges start to set, take them out and let them cool on a wire rack. They'll still seem a little underdone when you first take them out, but they'll continue to set juuuuust enough while they cool, which is what makes their divinely odd gooey-but-kind-of-crispy texture. 

     Then they're done! Enjoy them while you can, because a batch only makes about a dozen, so they go fast.