Chocolatey Chocolate Awesome!

Yesterday my friend Lea at work brought in cookies she made to share. They were some of the absolute best chocolate truffle cookies I'd ever had, so of course I needed the recipe. She shared, and so I spent some time this afternoon making the cookies. I deviated from the directions a bit, but the end result is the same...the only difference is that the dough is a bit tougher to work with if you skip things like I did :-)

Here, for you all, are some pictures followed by the recipe. I apologize for not having total step-by-step pics, but when you have sticky chocolate dough all over your fingers it's kinda dumb to break out the camera.

Here they are, nearly done in my oven. The amazing cookie tray is courtesy of my wonderful sister-in-law. If you want to keep to the tradition and have them less cookie-like and more truffle-like, refridgerate the dough overnight. It makes it stiffer, slightly less sticky, and the cookies bake in the ball rather than flatten a bit like mine did.

Here they are cooling. Once they're cool, they get rolled in powdered sugar. Twice. YUM.

Here they are in all their squishy glory. You can't even begin to imagine how divine these things are.

For the dredging/coating/whatever you want to call it.

On a side note, everyone should get these SnapWare containers. I have one for flour, one for sugar, and one for powdered sugar. Life is grand with these things.

  

And here we are, kids. Chocolate wrapped in more chocolate with a powdered sugar coating. Too. Damn. Delicious. The best part is, even when they're cool, the kisses have a gooey texture. God, I love these cookies. You should, too. Make them. Trust me, it's worth breaking your resolution diets.

RECIPE!

Double Chocolate Truffle Cookies w/Hershey Kiss Centers
-1 cup softened margarine or butter
-1 teaspoon vanilla
-2/3 cup sugar
-1 2/3 cup flour
-1/4 cup cocoa powder
-1 bag Hershey kisses
-powdered sugar for coating (optional, but oh so tasty)

Cream the sugar, butter, and vanilla in a large bowl, set aside.

In another bowl, mix together the flour and cocoa. Slowly blend into the other mixture.

If you want them to stay ball-like, here is where you put the dough in the fridge. Overnight works best, but a couple of hours just to firm it up will work. I skipped this step and got a more cookie-like look. The taste is the same.

Once you've chosen your method, here is where you need to preheat the oven to 350.

Using a scant tablespoon, mold the dough around a kiss. Put 'em on a baking sheet and bake for 8-11 minutes until the cookies are set. I did mine at 11 and they came out perfect.

When they're done, they should still have an almost cake-like spongy quality to them, but they will still obviously be a cookie-like snack.

After they cool, coat them in powdered sugar. If you have them in a ball shape, just roll 'em through twice. If they are a cookie shape, flopping 'em in and covering them works just fine.

Store them in an airtight container and all is well in your chocolatey world for a while.