Cooking with Kelly: Chocolate Butter Cookie Recipe

I make all my baked goods with a pinch of love, and love is fat free; therefore, these cookies are healthy. Not really, but I do think that they have healing properties because of the chocolate. My coworker recently tore a tendon, so I made her these cookies to speed along her recovery. She maintains it's the best thing I've ever made, and she's tasted a lot of my baked goods. These cookies are a little time consuming, but generally easy.

The recipe yields about 30 moist, fluffy cookies that aren't overly sweet and end up looking very impressive. With some nice packaging, these chocolate butter cookies could completely pass for bakery treats.

Chocolate Butter Cookie Recipe

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon instant coffee powder

1 package cream cheese, room temperature

1 stick butter, room temperature

1 egg

1 box moist chocolate cake mix

1 cup powdered sugar

Mix the coffee and vanilla extract to reconstitute the coffee. Using a stand mixer on medium with the paddle attachment, cream together the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add the egg, then add the vanilla mixture. Finally, add the chocolate cake mix slowly, scraping the sides as needed until incorporated.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, then chill for two hours or freeze for about an hour. 

Place the powdered sugar in a mixing bowl, then roll out the cookies. I used a one-Tablespoon scoop to portion out the cookies because the batter is sticky, but you can roll them out by hand if you add a touch of vegetable oil to your hands first.

Drop the cookies in the powdered sugar a few at a time and shake gently to coat in powdered sugar. Place on a cookie sheet no closer than two inches from each other. Bake at 350-degrees for 12 minutes, no more, no less. The cookies will look slightly undone, but that's what you're after for a tender, gooey cookie.