The Best Chocolate Cookies You’ll Ever Make

I'm Frank Proto, [upbeat music]

Professional Chef and Culinary Instructor,

and today I'm gonna show you

how to make my favorite holiday cookie,

a Dutch cocoa cookie.

We're talking chewy center,

crispy edges,

chocolatey goodness in one little cookie.

This is Holiday Cookies 101.

There's a lot of reasons why I love this cookie.

They're easy to make, they taste great,

they last for a long time, so they're great for gifting

if you want to gift for the holidays.

I like to get them as a gift.

Please make these cookies and send them to me.

Lots of 'em all.

All this talk about sweets is making me hungry.

Let's bake some cookies.

[upbeat music] [air whooshing]

First thing we want to do is put our butter and our sugar

in the mixer.

Put the mixer down, make sure it's locked.

Do not turn the mixer on full blast right now;

we wanna start low and then go high

so that we can really whip our butter up

and get some air into it

and break those sugar crystals down.

We wanna mix it until it's nice and creamy.

This is gonna kind of start to melt the sugar

and it's gonna give our finished cookie

a really nice texture.

Take a second here to scrape your sides down

and your bottom down

just in case there's butter or sugar

that is not incorporated.

And then we go for a little longer.

Once you start seeing it get lighter and fluffier,

again, you scrape down the sides one more time.

So I have a measuring cup here,

I have my eggs and vanilla.

If I crack here and I get shell in there,

it's gonna be really hard to take out.

So get yourself a bowl or a measuring cup.

The eggs in this are basically the cement of the cookie.

When we bake the cookie, it goes from liquid to solid.

It gives us some chewiness, some fat, some flavor,

and it holds the cookie together.

Vanilla in with the eggs. [metal clinking]

So we turn the sugar back on. [mixer whirring]

If we add all the eggs at once,

it gets really slushy and messy.

So one at a time.

One egg and vanilla.

Once the egg is incorporated, I can add the other egg.

And you can see it's coming together,

it's getting nice and creamy.

I stop it and I scrape my sides down again

because there's some butter and sugar

that's stuck to the side, the eggs aren't mixed in with.

It is really crucial that we scrape the sides down.

I don't wanna have a pocket of butter

or a pocket of sugar that hasn't been blended well,

you need to mix this really well.

Now that our wet ingredients are mixed together,

I can start with the dry, all-purpose flour.

Cake flour won't give you enough structure,

bread flour might give you a little too much structure

and have your cookie be a little tough.

All-purpose is the happy medium.

Baking soda is our lavender.

Without the lavender, they'd be flat discs

and really wouldn't have a lot of texture to them.

Salt. Salt is a flavor enhancer.

It's gonna accentuate the butter, the sugar,

the vanilla, and the cocoa flavors.

And then our cocoa powder.

I'm using a Dutch-processed cocoa powder.

Dutch processed cocoa powder is regular cocoa powder

that has been treated with an alkalide or an alkaline

to make it a little more smoother,

a little more rounder, a little bit darker,

a slightly muted kind of cocoa flavor.

[air whooshing] And that's what I want in my recipe.

Get a whisk, just whisk it together.

Make sure you mix it really well

so everything's incorporated.

If there's any lumps, just break them up with your whisk.

When ingredients are done, dry ingredients are done.

This cookie recipe is not fussy.

It's easy and simple,

and you basically just get to dump everything in.

Do not turn this on all the way.

So what I like to do is just pulse the switch

until it gets incorporated.

Otherwise, you're gonna get a big cloud of flour and cocoa

in your face.

I'm gonna stop. I'm gonna scrape down my sides.

Once again, people worry about over mixing

and there's so much butter and sugar

and egg in this cookie.

It's really hard to overmix, right?

It's just like I said,

it's not fussy and it's really simple and basic.

Scrape your sides down and mix.

[mixer whirring]

And that's it.

My dough is done.

I know my dough is done

because if you take it off of the machine,

there's no dry flour on the bottom.

It's really mixed well,

and there's no spots of butter or sugar,

everything is nice and chocolatey brown.

So we get in there, get everything off of your paddle.

This cookie dough has a really nice, dark, rich color.

You can smell the chocolate now

and it's gonna be even better once we put it in the oven.

You see how quick and easy that was?

We just put together a few simple ingredients.

Now we get to put 'em on a sheet tray and bake 'em.

[upbeat music] [air whooshing]

One final touch for these Dutch cocoa cookies

is that we're gonna roll them in sugar.

I have a disher or an ice cream scoop,

that some people call it.

This is 1 1/2 tablespoons.

I like my cookies a little on the large side.

And what this does for us

is it gives us a uniform size of cookie.

You can use a tablespoon measure, that's great,

but your cookies are gonna be all different sizes.

So I go into the bowl, I pack it in there,

and I scrape it on the side.

So I have a nice, uniform cookie every single time.

So you take the dough, drop it into your sugar.

Not only is dipping in the sugar gonna make it taste great,

it also gives it a little more crunch on the outside,

and I like that.

It looks good, it tastes good, and that's what I want.

So roll them in the sugar.

I'm gonna do three across.

Space them out properly so they don't run into each other,

and we'll do four down.

So 12 cookies per tray.

Another thing I love about this recipe

is you do not need to refrigerate this.

Yes, you can scoop them and freeze them.

If you're gonna do that, don't dip 'em in the sugar

until right before you put 'em in the oven.

Scoop them plain, let 'em freeze,

put 'em in a Ziploc bag,

and then put 'em in the sugar right before you bake.

But the fringe benefit of these is you can make the dough,

scoop it and bake it in the same day.

These cookies are looking great already.

It's time to get in the oven.

I'm gonna put 'em in at 350 for about 10 to 12 minutes.

[air whooshing] [upbeat music]

The cookies have come outta the oven

and they've cooled completely.

We want them to cool down all the way.

Let's give one a taste.

And you can see the texture is nice and fudgy on the inside.

The edge is a little crispy.

Hmm, this is an amazing cookie.

It's got a little bit of everything.

It's chewy, it's crunchy, it's chocolatey, it's rich.

These Dutch cocoa cookies are my favorite

and I love to give them as gifts around the holidays.

You give these cookies as a gift,

you have a friend for life.

Hmm.