Last week I found myself lying down on the kitchen floor in the middle of the day because everything felt just a bit too much. As I stared up at the ceiling, I tried to talk myself out of the “too loud, too scary, too busy, too needy, too everything” spiral by thinking of something wonderful and frivolous I could do this weekend. I landed on cookies. I spent today baking until I perfected a completely nonessential, gratuitous, absolutely delightful rocky road cookie recipe. I have no regrets.
I’ve been staunchly anti-nut in baked goods for my entire life but I have to believe that we can grow as people or else what is the point? You’ll never find me putting a walnut in a brownie (like, ever) but if I can’t make space for a perfectly roasted almond in a rocky road cookie? That’s not a life I want to live.
If you can’t bring yourself to open your heart to nuts in cookies you’ll find no judgment from me (it took me 38 years to get here) just leave them out, nix the almond extract, and call them “hot chocolate cookies.” Or! Leave out the nuts, swap the almond for peppermint extract, and have some festive “peppermint hot chocolate” cookies! Play with these cookies is what I’m saying. Get up off the kitchen floor and measure some ingredients. It’s good for the soul.
Last year when I was searching for holiday cookies to bake, I found a recipe for S’mores Cookies. I made them and fell in love with what happens to the mini marshmallows. They get slightly crisp on the outside, and taste of faintly burnt sugar like the perfect campfire marshmallow, but the inside gets almost caramelized and chewy. The cookie itself was disappointing though. Dry and kind of bland and boring. I couldn’t stop thinking about the mini marshmallows, though, so I decided rocky road would be the perfect way to incorporate them into a cookie. I’ve been making a lot of Grossy Pelosi Chocolate Chip Cookies lately, and I’m loving the new-to-me cold butter technique, so I decided to start with it and make some tweaks. This is where I ended up:
Rocky Road Cookies
Ingredients
1.5 cups cold, unsalted butter, cut into cubes
1.25 cups granulated sugar
1.25 cups brown sugar
2 eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
3.5 cups all-purpose flour
0.5 cups cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 cup chopped almonds (i used blanched almonds so I didn’t have to contend with almond skins but you do you. Maybe you want to use a different nut? I’m not the boss of you! You use whatever nut speaks to your soul, just don’t tell me if you use walnuts.)
Mini marshmallows (a small bag? I don’t know. This is where your individuality will shine. I will not tell you how many mini marshmallows to use. I will tell you that I use 4 - 5 mini marshmallows per cookie, and I get about 50 cookies from each batch.)
Directions
Preheat oven to 350F. Spread almonds on cookie sheet. Roast for 6 - 8 minutes, depending on how hot your oven is, stirring often, until golden brown. Remove from hot cookie sheet and cool on a plate. Turn off your oven. Conserve heat. We’re not baking the cookies until later.
Mix cubed butter, sugars, eggs, and extracts in a stand mixer until combined but not uniformly creamed. You want some small hunks of butter to remain and the goal is to keep the butter as cold as possible.
Dump your butter mixture into a large mixing bowl and use a wooden spoon to mix in flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, salt, chocolate chips, and cooled almond. The batter will be stiff and may not come together completely but that’s okay; we’re going to use our hands to form the cookies and our body heat will melt the butter just enough to make it all come together. TWSS.
Roll dough into balls (I use approximately one heaping tablespoon to form my cookie balls because I like a good-sized cookie. I get about 50 cookies from one batch. If you want more cookies, or smaller cookies, use less dough to form your balls. Measure it with your heart.) Throw them all on a cookie sheet and freeze for at least 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350F. Prepare a cookie sheet by lining with parchment paper (making sure you do the @grossypelosi parchment paper trick). You want to space your cookie balls about two inches apart so they don’t stick together in one giant cookie when you bake them but how many you can fit will depend on the size of your cookie sheet. I do 8 at a time. Put however many cookie balls you can fit onto your cookie tray with appropriate spacing and bake for 6 minutes.
After 6 minutes, remove your cookie sheet from the oven, gently press 4 - 5 (or more! or less!) mini marshmallows into the top of each cookie. Put the cookie sheet back into the oven and bake for an additional 9 minutes until the tops of the marshmallows are golden. Let cookies cool slightly on the cookie sheet so they harden enough to be removed without falling apart. Enjoy!
A few things:
- If you want a crispy cookie, you need to bake them a little longer. 15 minutes is long enough for a slightly crisp outside with an ooey gooey centre.
- If you don’t want to bake your entire batch at once, transfer your freezer balls to a ziplock freezer bag and keep frozen. You can bake them directly from the freezer by adding a few minutes to the bake time (I do 18 minutes for frozen solid balls and they turn out perfectly).
- If you want to take these cookies to the next level, sprinkle a little flaky sea salt on top of each cookie after you put the marshmallows on, before you do the second bake.
- The almond extract is really subtle; if you prefer a more aggressive almond taste, bump it up to a teaspoon or more. Half a teaspoon gives the cookies a hint of nuttiness but it’s not overpowering. If you don’t like almond extract, just leave it out completely.