Chocolate Sugar Cookies - Revised

Ingredients

• Butter unsalted 
• Dark brown sugar
• Vanilla extract
• Egg
• Egg yolk
• All-purpose flour
• Cocoa powder
• Baking soda
• Baking powder
• Salt
• Superfine white sugar

My Ingredient Choices

Superfine White Sugar

To coat the cookie balls before baking, I used Domino Superfine sugar. You can certainly use regular white sugar if you do not have superfine sugar. To get the same effect, you can add your regular sugar to a food processor and pulse it a few times to make it finer. The fine sugar gives the cookie that cracked and pitted look.

Cocoa Powder

My favorite new cocoa is Guittard Cocoa Rouge Cocoa Powder (Amazon link). I found it here in Lancaster at the Wegman store, which was cheaper than Amazon. Of course, there are more expensive cocoa powders out there, but this cocoa is rated as a very good one that won't break the bank for home baking.

All-purpose Flour

All of my cookie recipes that call for all-purpose flour only get King Arthur All-Purpose Flour. There was a time during the COVID lockdown when there was a shortage of flour in all the grocery stores. But King Arthur was selling 3 LBS bags straight from their online store. That was a life savior.

Unsalted Butter

The choice of butter is strictly up to you. Salted or Unsalted is a personal preference. For me, I use Land-O-Lake Unsalted for the reason I like to know what salt is being added and how much. Salt amounts can differ from one brand to another. Land-O-Lake has always been consistent with its look and taste.

Kosher Salt

I have always used Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt for my cookies and meal prep. When researching brands to use for my baking, this brand seemed to be number one a lot of the time. Bon Appetit did a great article on "What is Kosher Salt" you might want to check it out.

Making Chocolate Sugar Cookies

Not much to prep for these cookies except weighing out some ingredients. In a bowl, weigh or measure your dark brown sugar and set it aside. Please note that I use soft brown sugar; if yours has hard clumps, you may want to consider getting a new bag or box. The mixer has difficulty creaming the butter and brown sugar together with hard lumps.

Next, weigh or measure the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa powder, and salt in another bowl. Run a whisk through to blend.

Add the butter and dark brown sugar into your mixer bowl, starting on the low setting and increasing it until you reach a medium speed. Blend for 3 minutes. You should get a rich medium brown color that looks whipped.

Next, incorporate the vanilla extract and the eggs. Scrape down the sides and turn the mixer on to a low speed, gradually adding the flour mixture. Cover loosely and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 350°F (175°C or 180°C), and line 2 cookie sheet pans with parchment paper.

I take a paper plate and add superfine sugar to roll the cookie balls easily.

I use a medium cookie scooper to scoop out enough cookie dough so you can roll it in your hand to form a ball.

Add the cookie dough ball to the paper plate with the superfine sugar and roll it around to cover the outside.

These cookies spread some, so I only put nine cookie balls onto a cookie sheet pan. Press down very lightly on top of each ball, so they do not roll around on the pan. Since I worked with the cookie dough with my hands, the dough can get warm, so I put the whole pan into the fridge for 5 to 10 minutes to cool the butter down again.

Bate at 350°F (175°C or 180°C) for 12 to 14 minutes. Let them firm up a bit on the pan after they come out of the oven before moving them to a cooling rack.