Father’s Day is next weekend so we wanted to share this recipe as I am sure the fathers in your life will love it as much as mine does. This is another one of our family recipes handed down by my great grandmother (my mother’s maternal grandmother) and is a favourite of one of my uncle’s. Once, when he was younger, he decided to bake himself some chocolate drop cookies and instead of adding one teaspoon of salt he added one tablespoon. The horror! There is nothing worse then having a craving, putting in the effort to bake something you really want only to have it not turn out. I wish I could say I have never made such a mistake, but I would be lying. I have used baking soda instead of powder, an easy horrible mistake, and recently I forgot an entire cup of sugar in my brownies. Yuck! It happens to all of us and makes for a hilariously tragic memory. I’m sure this recipe will bring up memories for both my mother’s siblings and her cousins, hopefully some that don’t involve too much salt.
This was not a recipe I grew up with, I only recently had them when I was over at my Great Aunt’s, and she made a batch for us to have after lunch. They were delicious. I wondered why this was not a cookie my mom made for my brother and I as children and we realized it is probably because the recipe calls for baking chocolate. Baking chocolate is one of those ingredients that you buy with a specific recipe in mind, unless of course you have a favorite recipe that calls for it. However, like us, you might not have it on hand when you’re craving these delicious cookies. So, we decided to see if we could make this recipe with cocoa powder instead, and you can. We will be sharing both the original recipe and our cocoa powder alternative.
We also wanted to post this recipe to celebrate my own father who absolutely loves cake. What do cookies have to do with cake? In this case a lot. These cookies are basically drops of baked cake, especially when you ice them. But they are also enjoyable plain or covered in icing sugar.
Now we got a little excited when we made the chocolate drop cookies and realized that the possibilities are endless. Mom thought, why not try adding some mint so you have chocolate mint cookies? I thought why not vanilla icing and sprinkles? We had to do at least one cookie switch up and after all our brainstorming we decided to do orange chocolate cookies. Hopefully, we have inspired you to make these cookies for your fathers and loved ones. When you do let us know. We would love to hear about the memories you may have already and the ones you have made.
For these cookies you will need:
1 ½ cup all purpose flour
¼ tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
2 oz unsweetened baking chocolate*
½ cup melted butter
1 cup lightly packed brown sugar
1 large egg at room temperature
½ cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
For the chocolate orange cookies add:
Zest of 1 large orange
½ tsp orange extract
*Cocoa powder alternative:
Omit baking chocolate, add an additional 2 tbsp of butter and 6 tbsp of cocoa powder.
Preheat your oven to 350 ̊ F, and let the egg and milk come to room temperature. Sift together flour, salt, baking powder and orange zest. If you are using cocoa powder sift the cocoa into the dry ingredients.
Our next step is to melt the chocolate, you can do this in a double boiler or in the microwave. If you are using a double boiler, make sure steam or water doesn’t come into contact with the chocolate, if it does the chocolate will seize. We prefer to use the microwave. Cut the chocolate into small pieces for even melting and place in a microwave safe liquid measuring cup.
Melt in the microwave at 50% power for 30 second intervals until just melted. Repeat with butter in a seperate cup then combine chocolate and butter before setting aside to cool.
In a large bowl slightly beat the egg. Pour the chocolate mixture into the bowl whisking lightly until combined with the egg.
Make sure the egg is at room temperature and the chocolate has cooled to prevent curdling.
If you are using cocoa powder whisk the egg and sugar together in this step.
When you are measuring the brown sugar watch out for lumps of sugar. If you are lump free go ahead and whisk in the brown sugar.
Add the extracts to your milk before whisking it into the chocolate mixture.
Pour the chocolate mixture into the flour. Carefully stir until flour is fully incorporated. Try not to over stir the batter as this will result in a tough cookie.
Before baking let your batter stand for 10 mins, this will allow the batter to firm up a little making it easier to scoop.
Scoop 1 heaping tablespoon of the batter. If you have one we recommend you use a cookie scoop.
Tip from Jane: First time making this cookie? Bake a tester. Every oven is different, some ovens run at a higher temperature. To determine the best baking time for your oven bake a cookie for 8 mins and allow it to cool completely. Check to make sure cookie is moist with a cake like texture. We baked the cookies using cocoa powder for 8 mins and the cookies using chocolate for 9 mins.
Bake 12 cookies to a tray on the middle rack, one tray at a time for 8-10 minutes. We recently invested in a silpat and love it, though parchment paper will also work.
Cool your cookie sheets between baking. We like to place ours on a raised cooling rack, bowl or strainer. Raising the pan allows it to cool faster.
Let your cookies cool while you make the icing.
After making the cookies with both the cocoa powder and the baking chocolate we noticed that they had different flavours. The baking chocolate makes the cookies taste a little more like milk chocolate, it has a subtle chocolate flavour. Using cocoa powder gave the cookies a stronger chocolate flavour, more like dark chocolate. Both are delicious but I think we will be using the cocoa powder from now on for both flavour and convenience.
For the chocolate icing you will need:
2 cup icing sugar
¼ cup cocoa powder
¼ cup butter softened
¼ cup strong brew coffee
½ tsp vanilla
Method: In a medium bowl beat softened butter and icing sugar until combined. Add the extract then 1 tablespoon of the liquid at a time until you use all 4 tablespoons or reach the desired consistency. If the icing is too thick, add a little bit more liquid, too thin, add a little more icing sugar.
For the orange icing you will need:
2 ½ cup icing sugar
¼ cup butter softened
¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
½ tsp orange extract
Food colouring is optional if you want your icing an orange colour.
Method: In a medium bowl beat softened butter and icing sugar until combined. Add the extract then 1 tablespoon of the liquid at a time until you use all 4 tablespoons or reach the desired consistency. If the icing is too thick, add a little bit more liquid, too thin, add a little more icing sugar.
Here is a comparison between the icing without food colouring and the icing with food colouring. If you choose not to use food colouring the icing will be pale yellow in colour. Either one tastes delicious!
We used about ½ tablespoon of icing per cookie. It iced all but six of the cookies which was okay with us as we like them plain as well. If you want them all iced use a little less than ½ tablespoon of icing.
Beware these cookies won’t last long, which is probably for the best because once iced they are not the easiest to store. If you are storing them let the icing dry a little before carefully storing with layers of wax paper separating the cookies. Check out more pictures of these amazing cookies below the recipe or swing by our gallery.
Chocolate Drop Cookies
Ingredients
- 1½ cup all-purpose flour
- ¼ tsp salt
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 2 oz baking chocolate*
- ½ cup melted butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 large egg at room temperature
- ½ cup milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
*Cocoa Powder Alternative
- Omit Baking Chocolate
- Add additional 2 tbsp butter
- 6 tbsp cocoa powder
Chocolate icing
- 2 cups icing sugar
- ¼ cup cocoa powder
- ¼ cup softened butter
- ¼ cup strong brew coffee
- ½ tsp vanilla extract
Orange icing
- 2½ cups icing sugar
- ¼ cup softened butter
- ¼ cup freshly squeezed orange juice
- ½ tsp orange extract
- food colouring
Instructions
- Sift together dry ingredients.
- Melt chocolate then add it to the melted butter.
- Then beat in sugar, egg, milk and vanilla.
- On low speed beat in dry ingredients.
- Let stand of 10 mins.
- Bake on a lined baking sheet for 8 to ten minutes in a 350°F oven.
Icing
- In a medium bowl beat softened butter and icing sugar until combined.
- Add the extract then 1 tablespoon of the liquidat a time until you use all 4 tablespoons or reach the desired consistency.
- If the icing is too thick, add a little bit more liquid, too thin, add a little more icing sugar.
- Ice cookies with approximately ½ tbsp of icing.
Notes
