Chocolate Drop Cookies

I may not have done this recipe justice… I was in a hurry and wasn’t very careful about reading the directions- but they still tasted good! If you need something chocolaty, give these a try. 

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Chocolate Drop Cookies

½ cup butter or margarine, softened

1 cup sugar

1 egg

2 squares unsweetened chocolate, melted and cooled

1/3 cup buttermilk

1 tsp vanilla

1 ¾ cups flour

½ tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

1 cup chopped nuts, if desired

Mix the butter, sugar, egg and chocolate. Stir in the vanilla and buttermilk. Stir together the dry ingredients and then blend in. Mix in nuts or other add-ins, if desired. Chill for at least one hour. Preheat the oven to 400 ̊F. Drop rounded teaspoonfuls on an ungreased baking sheet about 2” apart. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until almost no imprint remains when lightly touched. If desired, frost cookies with Browned Butter Glaze, Mocha Butter Icing, or Marie’s Chocolate Icing and sprinkle with nuts or flaked coconut. Makes 4 ½ dozen cookies.

Chocolate Cherry Drops

Add 2 cups cut up candied or drained maraschino cherries to Chocolate Drop cookie dough.

Double Chocolate Drops

Add 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips to Chocolate Drop cookie dough.

Marie’s Chocolate Icing

1 Tbsp butter

1 square unsweetened chocolate

1 ½ Tbsp warm water

1 cup sifted confectioners’ sugar

Melt the chocolate and butter over hot water. Blend in the warm water; beat in the confectioners’ sugar until the icing is easy to spread. Makes enough icing for 3 to 4 dozen cookies.

Browned Butter Icing

2 ½ Tbsp soft butter

1 ½ cups sifted confectioners’ sugar

1 ½ Tbsp cream

¾ tsp vanilla

Brown the butter in a saucepan over medium heat until a delicate brown color. Stir in sugar, cream, and vanilla until blended. Makes icing for 4 dozen cookies.

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So, the process of making these cookies went wrong in a lot of little ways. Perhaps part of the problem is the way it listed four different variations and three different icings were suggested… that can get confusing.

Chocolate, cherries, and walnuts- oh, my!

I elected to skip one of the variations (Cocoa Drop Cookies; see note below) because it involves actual changes in the dough, not just something different being mixed in. Also, I limited myself to two of the three icings- I felt mocha may not have as broad of an appeal (although I think it sounds delicious!).

The first step was melting the chocolate. I had to remind myself that it was unsweetened to keep from eating it, it looked so good!

Makes me want chocolate fondue

I mixed up the dough and popped it in the fridge to chill. Mistake number one: not dividing the dough and mixing in the add-ins BEFORE chilling. This was rather difficult to do once the dough was hard.

Mistake number two was baking these for the full ten minutes. After ten minutes, lightly touching the cookies still left an imprint- and the cookies were a little tough. I think the pans I baked for eight minutes were better.

Mistake number three was making Browned Butter Icing instead of Browned Butter Glaze! The directions suggest the glaze, but I just flipped to the icings page, saw “Browned Butter,” and made the icing. Oops.

Mistake number four was reading the ingredients for Marie’s Chocolate icing and then just mixing them up however I pleased. Perhaps if I had followed the preparation directions (instead of just melting the chocolate in the microwave and then stirring everything else in at once) it wouldn’t have continually gotten hard while I was trying to spread it on the cookies. Maybe that’s just how it is, though.

And the final mistake- forgetting to take pictures of the finished, frosted cookies before giving them all away. You’ll have to use your imaginations and try to picture them with their tasty frostings if you didn’t get to see them.

Here is how my cookies measure up to Betty’s in the looks department:

Betty's cookies (from Cooky Book, page 8)

Carly's cookies (clockwise, from top left: plain, with nuts, chocolate cherry, and double chocolate)

Actually, my last mistake was probably telling all of you about the mistakes I made; good thing people have already eaten them. :)  Despite my errors, these were chewy, chocolaty, and delicious! My favorite were the Double Chocolate Drops, but most people who commented on their favorites picked the cherry ones. While the chocolate icing was good, the browned butter icing was a nice contrast to the chocolaty-ness, especially on the cherry cookies.

If you tried these cookies, please leave a comment letting me know what you thought!

If I get the chance, I’ll try to come back to the Cocoa Drop variation, but there are a lot of other cookies to try! Here are the directions for those, though, in case you would like to try them:  

Variation I did not try- Cocoa Drop Cookies

Make the Chocolate Drop Cookies, except increase butter to 2/3 cup, omit the unsweetened chocolate and add ½ cup cocoa to the dry ingredients.

Up next: Brown Sugar Drops!

Carly

This cookie recipe was found on page 8 of Betty Crocker's Cooky Book; the icing recipes were found on page 150.