Growing up, my mom would sometimes make cute little sugar-coated peanut butter cookies with chocolate Hershey’s kisses plunked in the middle that we always called simply Happy Cookies. I was feeling in a bit of a funk for awhile this fall, and felt my cookies could use a bit of happy injected into them. Since I have a couple cookies ‘n’ cream lovers, I decided to make our chocolate cookies extra happy with cookies ‘n’ cream kisses.
I made these one afternoon for an after school snack, and got exactly the reaction I was hoping for: happy.
If you bake fresh cookies people will probably be happy. But if you stick a Hershey’s kiss in that cookie, it brings even more happiness. To be fair, marshmallows had exactly the same happy factor in the extra cookies once I ran out of kisses – they called these Hot Chocolate Cookies. And actually, M+Ms have similar impact…okay, put whatever you have handy into your cookies, it’s all happiness :)
These cookies are little, so the dough-to-kiss ratio is just right. The size also means this recipe makes about 60 cookies, give or take. Perfect for Christmas baking platters where you want a taste of everything, and perfect to eat two of after school or with a cup of evening tea. They also happen to be perfect when you kinda want to bake alone (basically always, if you’re me) but have a little helper who wants to help. Unwrapping all those kisses is great for the fine motor skills and perfectly time consuming! Look at that adorable level of focus.
Cookies ‘n’ cream kisses did seem slightly softer and meltier than regular milk chocolate kisses, so once you place them into the hot cookies they’ll be a little smooshy til everything cools back up. If your little helper wants to do the kiss insertion step, make sure you remind them not to hold onto the cookie sheet fresh out of the oven for balance…been there, done that (with Gemma, and she still talks about it years later as though it were one of my great failures of parenting.)
Hope these cookies add some extra happiness to your snacking!
- 1 cup butter, softened to room temperature
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- ¾ cup cocoa powder
- 1 Tbsp vanilla extract
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp baking powder
- About 60 Hershey's kisses (Cookies 'n' cream or your favourite flavour)
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- With electric mixer, cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat well. Add cocoa and vanilla and beat again.
- In separate small bowl, whisk together flour, salt and baking powder. Add this to wet ingredients and beat on low until combined.
- Scoop dough by generous teaspoonfuls onto prepared baking sheet and roll gently into balls with your hands. Bake in preheated oven for 9-10 minutes. While they bake, unwrap kisses and get ready :)
- Remove from oven and immediately place an unwrapped kiss in the center of each cookie. Let cool 5-10 minutes before using a spatula to remove cookies to a cooling rack. Kisses will re-harden fully as they cool. Repeat with remaining dough.
- Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days, or freeze for up to 3 months and thaw as needed.
Ooh I was needing a nut-free cookie swap recipe. These have definitely just made the top of the list :)
I still call them happy cookies because of you kids :) And remember, if we ran out of kisses, or rosebuds which I preferred to use to avoid unwrapping and they were cheaper, you girls called them the unhappy cookies. :) Even the unhappy cookies never went to waste. :)