Chocolate Espresso Snowcaps

Tis the season.  Already!  Time has flown as it usually does these days and I find myself staring down 

an enormous to-do list.  I'm thinking though that the act of staring down my list will do little to actually make it go away.  One can hope though?

These delightful cookies are fortunately very easy to prepare and look so festive they repeatedly find their way into my holiday baking rotation.  I love a good decorated sugar cookie as well as the next person and I will be making many of those, but I think it really fantastic to throw these little beauties into the mix.

If you find you are not an espresso person you can easily omit it from the ingredient list and still achieve a really good result.   To ensure a beautiful coating of icing sugar on your cookie you'll need to double roll them. That is, roll the batch of dough into balls, roll once in the sugar let set on the tray while you roll the remainder into balls then re-roll in icing sugar just before you bake them off.  Otherwise they'll look a little anemic.

Slightly crispy on the outside and decadently chewy and moist on the inside they are exactly what a crinkle cookie should be.  Be prepared to beat your loved ones off with a stick, then sit back and cross one more thing of that enormous to-do list.

Happy Holiday Baking!

Chocolate Espresso Snowcaps
1/2 C. all purpose flour
1/4 C. unsweetened cocoa powder (dark cocoa powder if you can find it)
4 t. instant espresso
1 t. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
4 T. unsalted butter
2/3 C. light brown sugar
1 egg
4 oz. dark or semi-sweet chocolate, melted and cooled
1 T. milk
1 Cup icing sugar for rolling

In the bowl of a mixer, cream the sugar and butter until light. Add the egg and mix until well combined. Slowly add the melted and cooled chocolate.
Sift the dry ingredients together in a separate bowl.  Slowly add to the creamed chocolate mixture then add the milk.

Slightly flatten the dough and wrap in plastic wrap.  Refrigerate for 1 hour.
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment. Using a 1 tablespoon scoop, roll the dough into balls.  Pour the icing sugar in to a medium sized bowl then roll the ball in it, covering liberally.  No dough should be visible through the sugar.  Roll all balls similarly, then re-roll.
Bake for 12-15 minutes or until done.
Let sit on tray for 5 minutes then remove to a wire rack for cooling.

Recipe slightly adapted from Martha Stewart.