Dusted Chocolate Stars

I am terrible. Can you ever forgive me? Is anyone out there even reading my randomly updated blog?

I had such high hopes for this blog, and here I am with no updates and barely any cooking. Those of you who have read a post or two know that I am in the awkward position of running a food and cooking blog with no money; when I started this I had planned to cook and bake and experiment, but then our kitchen (since I am still at home with my parentals) took much longer to finish. The kitchen is still unfinished, which is sad because it’s been over a year, and money has been tight. So blogging is difficult.

I have many weaknesses, one of which is chocolate. My love affair with chocolate is absolutely ridiculous, and it is second only to my passion for caramel and candies. I also love to experiment, and my life, while unemployed and working on getting back into school, often revolves around digging around for recipes and trying new things. So when I came across this chocolate cookie recipe on Bake at 350, I couldn’t resist. Chocolate cut out cookies? Yes please. The recipe calls for a cocoa frosting, but I’m not big on frosting like that on my cookies, so I decided to dust my cookies with a light dusting of powdered sugar. I also modified it by splashing it a bit of vanilla extract to balance the strong taste of the cocoa.

Over all, they are good cookies, though to me they taste more like brownies than cookies. They aren’t quite my style, but it was work a shot. I bet they would be fabulous with a scoop of vanilla ice cream between two of them. Anyway, onward to baking and really bad food photography.

 
Blend together flour, salt, baking powder, and cocoa

    
This ladies and gentlemen is my ancient but trusty stand mixer. It may not be pretty, but it knows what it’s doing. Here I blended together the sugar, eggs, shortening, and milk, along with a splash of vanilla.

Here’s part of why it got messy for me. Mixing the dry ingredients into the wet, I switched from my paddle attachment to my dough hook. It makes a world of difference if you ask me.

  
After the dough was chilled for two hours I rolled it out and cut it into stars. The recipe pictures were scalloped circles, but I don’t even have a circle cutter unless you count my biscuit cutter. And let’s try to ignore my ugly cookie sheet, huh?

  
Baked at 375 for eight minutes, and once they were cooled I removed them from the cookie sheet and onto waxed paper and dusted them with powdered sugar.

Recipe for Rolled Cocoa Stars

3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups sugar
1 cup shortening
2 eggs
1/4 cup milk
1/2 tablespoon vanilla extract

• Combine flour, baking powder, salt, and cocoa
• Blend sugar, shortening, eggs, milk, and vanilla
• Gradually add in cocoa mixture until all is blended in.
• Chill dough for two hours
• Roll out and cut into shapes
• Bake at 375 for 8 minutes, cookies will still be soft to the touch