Christmas Cookies 🎅 with cocoa, tender cookies with a soft heart and spicy taste.
During the Christmas season, we like to fill the house with the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg, and every day becomes a little family celebration. It takes just a few minutes to make these cookies; we found the recipe while browsing the internet and made only small adjustments to suit our taste, but if you want to read the original, you can find it here.
Preparing the dough takes only a few minutes, but since it needs to remain soft without being sticky, it requires about an hour of rest in the refrigerator. If you’re in a hurry, as often happens here, I assure you that you can place the covered dough in the freezer, and in this case, a rest of just 15 minutes will be enough.
To flavor them, we used the same spices found in gingerbread, and I must say they go perfectly with chocolate.
They could be a sweet thought to give as a gift to your guests at Christmas; they will surely be appreciated and, well-sealed in bags, they remain unchanged for many days.
For those who love kneading at home and preparing genuine snacks, perhaps with the help of your little ones as assistant pastry chefs, I also remind you
- Difficulty: Very Easy
- Cost: Cheap
- Rest time: 1 Hour
- Preparation time: 10 Minutes
- Portions: 48 cookies
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: Christmas
- Energy 50.03 (Kcal)
- Carbohydrates 8.34 (g) of which sugars 3.71 (g)
- Proteins 1.14 (g)
- Fat 1.78 (g) of which saturated 0.91 (g)of which unsaturated 0.81 (g)
- Fibers 0.58 (g)
- Sodium 19.41 (mg)
Indicative values for a portion of 16 g processed in an automated way starting from the nutritional information available on the CREA* and FoodData Central** databases. It is not food and / or nutritional advice.
* CREATES Food and Nutrition Research Center: https://www.crea.gov.it/alimenti-e-nutrizione https://www.alimentinutrizione.it ** U.S. Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service. FoodData Central, 2019. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov
Ingredients
The ingredients to find are surely the spices and almonds, the rest you will surely have in your kitchens.
- 2 oz butter (melted)
- 1.06 oz almonds (chopped)
- 1 egg
- 4.23 oz sugar
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 0.35 cups unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 packet baking powder
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon (leveled)
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg (ground)
- 1/4 tsp ginger (ground)
- 1 pinch salt
- 1/4 cup milk
- as needed sugar (for the surface)
Tools
No major tools are needed to prepare this recipe; you could knead directly by hand. For convenience, we used the stand mixer.
- 1 Stand Mixer Howork
- 1 Knife
Preparation
The preparation of these delicious cookies is really simple and quick; the only difficulty, if we want to call it that, can be the soft dough to work into a log.
Place the melted butter, sugar, and egg in the bowl and start mixing at medium speed.
While mixing, add the milk, spices, a pinch of salt, almond flour, cocoa, flour, and finally the baking powder. Wait for each ingredient to be absorbed before adding the next.
Mix until you obtain a homogeneous dough that you will wrap in plastic wrap and let rest in the refrigerator. This rest is necessary to then roll it into two logs without adding more flour. The rest in the refrigerator should be one hour
Once the resting time is over, take the dough, divide it into two, and with your hands, roll it into a thick log. Pour a little granulated sugar on the work surface and roll the logs on it to coat them completely with sugar on the outside. Now with a kitchen knife, cut your cookies about an inch thick, place them on the baking tray lined with parchment paper, and finally, bake in a preheated oven at 340°F for about 12 minutes. Check the bottom to ensure they are cooked but must remain soft, and consider that they will dry a little as they cool.
We needed two baking trays because we made 48 cookies in total.
NOTES
These cookies keep well for several days if stored in lidded containers and can be a great gift idea since you can prepare them well in advance. If you don’t like any spices, you can replace them with cloves, for instance.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Can I replace unsweetened cocoa?
Surely you can replace unsweetened cocoa with blended dark chocolate; in this case, add 20g of cornstarch to the recipe.
What if I can’t let the dough rest?
If you don’t have an hour for resting in the refrigerator, you can place them in the freezer for just 15 minutes. However, if you want, you can use it directly after it’s ready, without forming a log but directly making balls and rolling them in granulated sugar.
