Food

Cinnamon sugar snowflake cookies with rich and creamy cocoa

Hot cocoa and cinnamon sugar snowflake cookies By Carly Pildis

By Carly Pildis December 17, 2020

Warm cinnamon and sugar pairs perfectly dipped in this ultra-rich cocoa, which almost acts as a sauce. This cozy dessert is pretty, fancy enough for Shabbat but fun and relaxed enough for a snow day. The cocoa is very rich so the portion here would be a small mug or half a large mug with small with two cookies. Feel free to double up, but we found the small portion perfect. Serves three for cocoa, and makes a dozen cookies. You will need snow cookie cutters – I got mine delivered from Wegmans!

Ingredients
2 tablespoons powdered sugar plus two 2 cups for rolling cookies in
2 ½ cups flour
1 cup granulated sugar
Pinch of salt
½ teaspoon baking powder

2 tablespoons cinnamon
2 tablespoons vanilla
2 eggs
10 tablespoons of high-quality butter
3 cups whole milk
2 cups good quality dark chocolate chips
Parchment paper

I insist you put on flannel pajamas and fluffy socks and Rosemary Clooney’s classic anthem, “Snow” before you begin. I’ll wait.

Now that you’re ready, shift flour, baking powder cinnamon, and salt. Yum! Looks like fluffy snow. Cream together butter, sugar, and vanilla until rich and fully integrated with an electric mixer. Now add eggs one at a time. Add dry ingredients, slowly, half at a time.

Place the dough in two small Ziploc bags and flatten. Chill for one hour. Watch baking competitions while you wait. Put parchment on your favorite baking sheet.

Now you can roll out the dough. I like to do it between two oiled pieces of plastic wrap for minimal mess. Also because I lost my rolling pin and am always doing it with a bottle of wine. These don’t need to be rolled super thin, a little thickness adds chew to the cookie. Stamp them out with those snow cutters and place them on a baking sheet. Bake at 375, mine were done in 8 minutes, but it will depend on the size of your cookies, I’d say 8 to 10, you want them lightly browned.

While they bake, dump all the ingredients for hot cocoa (2 tablespoons of powdered sugar, 2 cups of chocolate, 3 cups of milk in a small saucepan. Whisk together on medium heat until the chocolate is totally melted. It will trick you and you’ll find more at the bottom. Not too hot or it will scorch. Whisk leisurely but continuously, while watching tv. Or let your kid do it. When the cocoa is very rich, almost like a sauce, and warm to your liking its done. You can simply leave it covered on the stove and reheat when you are ready to eat. Add a little extra milk when reheating if it is too thick when it cools

Serve everyone a mug with 2 cookies on the side, ready for dipping!

HAPPY SNOW SHABBAT!

Carly Pildis is an organizing and advocacy professional living in Washington, D.C.

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