Oh my gosh, there’s only three more days till Christmas!
The past few weeks have been a bit manic in my world – I’ve been feeling a bit like a Christmas baking machine! There’s been all the bakes for the blog, a few Christmas party cakes, and of course the MANIA that is fruit mince pie and gingerbread production at the bakery where I work.
I’m so looking forward to the next few days of really getting ready for Christmas though. All my gifts are wrapped, all the blog posts have been baked and shot and our little Christmas tree is up, so the next few evenings will be all about starting to prepare my real-life Christmas desserts, and hopefully watching all my favourite Christmas movies! To Mr Man’s disdain. It’s not that he doesn’t like Christmas, or Christmas movies. It’s just that he doesn’t want to watch every single classic Christmas movie. Every single year. 😀
Anyway, onto these Christmas cookies! They’re basically one of my favourite chocolate chip cookie recipes turned into a Christmas version. They’ve got Christmas spices like nutmeg, they get a bit of snickerdoodle action when they are rolled in cinnamon sugar and they have a surprise inside – a melty pool of chocolate!
Who doesn’t love cookies stuffed with melty, gooey, chocolatey things!?
They’re the prefect stocking filler. X
- 140g unsalted butter (10 tbsp)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 230g plain (all purpose) flour (1¾ cups)
- 100g white sugar (1/2 cup - 2 tsp)
- 140g brown sugar (3/4 cup - 1 tbsp)
- ½ tsp ground dutch cinnamon
- ½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
- ¾ tsp baking soda
- ¾ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp sea salt (+ extra for sprinkling)
- 1 egg
- A little extra caster (superfine) sugar mixed with some cinnamon, for coating
- 100g dark chocolate chips (about ½ cup)
- Preheat the oven to 180 C (350 F) and line a couple of trays with baking paper.
- Brown the butter. Put the butter in a small saucepan and place over a medium heat. Cook, until the butter melts, foams up, subsides, smells nutty and has brown specks across the bottom of the pan. Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla.
- Set aside to cool for 10 minutes.
- Meanwhile, in a mixing bowl, combine the flour, both sugars, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder and soda and sea salt with a rubber spatula.
- Mix in the browned butter until mostly combined, then add the egg and stir until incorporated.
- Scoop up a tablespoon of cookie dough and flatten in the palm of your hand. Place some chocolate chips (around 7 - 8) in the centre of the disc and pinch the sides together to close the dough around the chocolate chips.
- Roll into a ball, roll into the cinnamon sugar and place on the prepared trays.
- Bake for 10 minutes, until the edges are golden and the cookies are slightly puffed.
- Allow to cool ever so slightly before digging in! Makes 16 cookies.
- Happy baking!
Cookie dough recipe adapted from Top with Cinnamon via this recipe.