This post was originally published in 2010. I updated the post in 2019.
I love these things. They are only available seasonally (thank goodness) but I find my buggy steering towards them each year soon as they make their first showing in the grocery store. I’ve always wanted to make my own and wondered if they would be even better at home. Well the good news is, a few years ago I FINALLY got a recipe for them from Mama!
Bad news is that as much as I like the store bought ones, the ones at home are even better. ~sighs~ And they know how to call my name in such a piteous longing fashion that I can’t prevent myself from visiting them just…one…more…time.
My only complaint is that the name is silly and misleading to us normal folks. People with culinary degrees and such may realize that “nougat” applies but the rest of us think about the chewy filling inside a candy bar and so don’t realize that this is just a yummy buttery shortbread with finely chopped nuts inside. So when I tell my kids what they are, I just say Shortbread Snowballs. It works.
You’ll need: Flour (all purpose), Sugar, vanilla, butter, finely chopped nuts of your choice, and salt.
Place your softened butter, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl and cream it til it’s git up and go done got up and went.
Like this
This is where the original recipe said to sift the flour. Pfft. Right.
I have a sifter and it sits up on a pretty little shelf in my kitchen where it collects dust.
I don’t sift. It is against my personal convictions.
Just dump your flour in there. Be rebellious with me.
Pour in your vanilla.
The recipe calls for two teaspoons but y’all know I just kinda pour and leave it up to the good Lord how much ends up in there.
It’s called divine baking – and I just made that term up. How cool is that? Stick with me, we’ll be the cool kids, even if no one knows it but us! ~winks~
Oh, you’re gonna need to scrape down the sides of your bowl some but you’ll figure that out…
Dump in your pecans.
Puh-kawns.
I just thought I’d spell that phonetically for anyone who may not know.
I know I just impressed you with that two dollar word, now didn’t I?
Oh, now you need to mix it all up again until well combined.
Like this.
Go ahead and get you a pinch of that dough and taste it.
Be sure to save some to bake though…I know it will be tempting.
I used my little cookie dough scoop and made some pretty generous sized cookies. you can just make them with your hands and make little one inch balls and have twice as many as I did but I was in a lazy, cookie dough scoop kinda mood and when I’m in those moods I try not to deny myself the pleasure of indulging in the easy way out.
Now bake ’em.
I made about thirty but you can easily make fifty or so instead.
After they cool roll those little puppies in confectioner’s sugar..
or “confectionary sugar” as one of my grandmother’s called it.
They are absolutely, melt in your mouth, delicious.
Here is what the inside of one would look like if your teeth were actually a butter knife…
What pretty little snowballs! One bite and you’ll be making this every year from here on out!
Pecan Nougat Cookies
Ingredients
1cupsoftened butter
1/2cupsugar
2teaspoonsvanilla
2cupsall purpose flour
1/2teaspoonsalt
2cupsfinely ground nuts of your choiceI’m using pecans
Confectioner’s sugar
Instructions
Cream butter, sugar, and salt until fluffy. Add flour and vanilla, mix well, scraping down sides as needed. Add nuts and mix until well incorporated. Shape into one inch balls (mine are bigger because I use a little cookie dough scoop) and place on ungreased baking sheet. Bake at 325 for twenty minutes, but don’t let them brown.
Cool cookies. When cooled, roll in confectioner’s sugar.
This recipe featured in Meal Plan Monday and Weekend Potluck
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Hot Cocoa Cookies are full of hot cocoa mix, chocolate chips, crushed candy canes and marshmallow bits all baked into one delicious cookie! These hot chocolate cookies are simple to make and taste just like your favorite cup of hot cocoa!
Hot Cocoa Cookies combine two of my favorite things about winter – hot chocolate and baked goodies. You can’t go wrong when the recipe includes hot chocolate mix, marshmallow bits, and chocolate chips! Recently I started adding crushed candy canes to the recipe because I absolutely love peppermint in my hot cocoa, but if you don’t like peppermint, you can definitely leave them out.
Most of the time I just use regular chocolate chips in this cookie recipe, but around Christmas I like to use the red and green baking chips to make the cookies a bit more festive. These are the perfect cookies for cookie exchanges because they are so easy to make, but are a little bit more unique than just regular chocolate chip cookies.
Ingredients in Hot Cocoa Cookies
1-1/4 cups butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
3-1/4 cups flour
4 packets instant hot cocoa (NOT sugar-free) OR 1/2 cup hot cocoa mix
1-1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. baking powder
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (you can use the holiday variety just for fun if you’d like!)
1 cup Jet-Puffed Vanilla Mallow Bits
1 cup crushed candy canes
How to make Hot Chocolate Cookies
Preheat oven to 350°. Beat butter and sugars in large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Combine flour, hot cocoa mix, baking soda and baking powder in separate bowl.
Gradually beat the dry mixture into the butter mixture until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips, Mallow Bits and crushed candy canes.
Drop onto baking sheets and bake 9-11 minutes or until edges are lightly browned. Since the cookies are brown to begin with, you have to be extra careful not to cook them too long!
How to crush candy canes
It is much easier to crush candy canes if you use the tiny ones rather than full sized candy canes! The tiny ones are much more fragile and break a lot easier.
I just take them all out of their individual packages and then place them in a ziplock bag. Let all of the extra air out of the bag before sealing and then use the end of a rolling pin or a meat mallet to smash them.
You don’t want to smash them so hard that you end up with a fine powder – you definitely want larger chunks that you can actually taste in the cookies. The crunch of the candy cane pieces adds a fun texture to this hot cocoa cookie recipe.
Just this year, I have been able to find bags of crushed candy canes in the baking aisle during the holiday season, and have been taking full advantage! I love not having to take the extra step of opening all of the little candy canes and then smashing them. So make sure to look for those bags – the ones at my store were green!
How to make the BEST hot chocolate cookies
After trying out multiple chocolate chip cookie recipes over many years, I have picked up several important tips for making the absolute BEST hot cocoa cookies.
Make sure that you have enough flour in the dough. If the dough is too sticky, you may need to add a little bit of flour.
Spend a little extra time when you mix the butter and sugars. Creaming them together for 2-3 minutes will improve the consistency of your cookies.
Also, spend extra time mixing once you have added the eggs and vanilla. Another 2-3 minutes is usually perfect!
Preheat the oven. This will help your cookies turn out right every time!
Use a cookie scoop! If you want all your cookies to be perfectly shaped and have them all be the same size, a cookie scoop is the way to go.
Use parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. Doing this will make it really easy to remove the cookies from your cookie sheet so that you don’t have to scrape them off the pan – they will just slide right off in perfect shape!
Don’t over bake the cookies – when I take mine out of the oven, they still look slightly under baked but they will continue to bake on the cookie sheet for a couple more minutes so that’s ok!
HOT COCOA COOKIES
Hot Cocoa Cookies are full of hot cocoa mix, chocolate chips, crushed candy canes and marshmallow bits all baked into one delicious cookie! These hot chocolate cookies are simple to make and taste just like your favorite cup of hot cocoa!
Print Pin Rate
Course: Cookies
Cuisine: American
Keyword: hot cocoa cookies
Prep Time: 10minutes
Cook Time: 10minutes
Total Time: 20minutes
Servings: 36cookies
Ingredients
1-1/4cupsbuttersoftened
1cupgranulated sugar
2/3cuppacked brown sugar
2eggs
1tsp.vanilla
3-1/4cupsflour
4packets instant hot cocoaNOT sugar-free (OR 1/2 cup hot cocoa mix)
1-1/4tsp.baking soda
1tsp.baking powder
1cupsemi-sweet chocolate chipsyou can use the holiday variety just for fun if you’d like!1 cup Jet-Puffed Vanilla Mallow Bits
1cup crushed candy canes
1 cup JetPuffed Mallow Bits
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350.
Beat butter and sugars in large bowl until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanilla, mix well. Combine flour, hot cocoa mix, baking soda and baking powder in separate bowl.
Gradually beat the dry mixture into the butter mixture until well blended.
Gradually beat the dry mixture into the butter mixture until well blended. Stir in chocolate chips, Mallow Bits and crushed candy canes.
Drop onto baking sheets and bake 9-11 minutes or until edges are lightly browned.
ENJOY! (How can you not?!)
Hot Cocoa Cookie troubleshooting tips
Over the years, I have had many cookie failures along with all of my successes and I have learned a few things along the way! You may have a favorite cookie recipe that you love, but they don’t always turn out perfectly. Why?! Here are some helpful tips for some common cookie problems!
Why are my cookies flat?
If your cookies are flat and spread out too much while baking, you may need to add a little bit more flour. Start by just adding a few tablespoons of flour to the batter and see if that is enough to help the shape of your cookies. If you are using a recipe with butter, make sure you aren’t melting the butter. There are a few cookie recipes that actually call for melted butter, but most of them just require the butter to be softened to room temperature. Which leads to the next question…
How do you soften butter to room temperature?
The best way to soften butter is to set it out for a few hours before you make your cookies. Since most of us (or maybe just me!) aren’t that prepared or don’t think that far in advance, there are a few tricks to softening butter perfectly in just a matter of minutes. My favorite way to soften butter is in the microwave. It’s definitely fast, but you do have to be very careful not to melt it. Just put the whole stick of butter in the microwave (as long as it isn’t wrapped in foil!) and microwave for about 6-7 seconds. If the butter is still really cold, try another 5-7 seconds and check it again. You may need a few intervals, and if the butter is starting to feel soft, you can shorten the final interval to just a few seconds to make sure it doesn’t start melting.
I actually prefer to use the defrost setting on my microwave – I don’t know exactly what that mode does differently, and it takes a little bit longer (closer to 30 seconds), but it seems to be easier to get the butter to soften without melting.
Why are my cookies crispy and hard?
If your cookies are hard, crunchy or crispy, you probably baked them too long. Cookies will continue to bake for a couple of minutes on the hot cookie sheet even after you remove them from the oven, so you don’t want to wait until they are golden brown before taking them out! My husband really likes a few cookies to be a little more well-done so that he can dip them in milk, so I usually make half a tray of cookies for him that get cooked a couple minutes longer.
Most of my cookies are baked until barely done. I don’t even wait for the tops to start turning golden brown, but look at the edges on the bottom of the cookies. If the edges look like they are turning a little bit golden brown, they’re done! You don’t want the centers of the cookies to look doughy, but they shouldn’t be even slightly brown on top either.
Why do my cookies burn on the bottom but aren’t done in the middle?
If your cookies are always burning on the bottom, it is probably a cookie sheet issue! If you are using really dark cookie sheets, the bottoms of your baked goods will tend to burn before they are actually cooked all the way through. If you use a lot of cooking spray, the same result can happen. I prefer to use lighter colored non-stick pans so that I don’t have to use cooking spray at all. As mentioned above, I have been converted to silicone baking mats over the last couple of years and I love how easy it is for cookies to come off the tray – no sticking ever!
Hot Cocoa Cookies are full of hot cocoa mix, chocolate chips, crushed candy canes and marshmallow bits all baked into one delicious cookie! These hot chocolate cookies are simple to make and taste just like your favorite cup of hot cocoa!
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The Skinny: Servings: 24 • Serving Size: 1 Cookie • Calories: 170 • Fat: 5 g • Saturated Fat: 3 g • Carb: 28 g • Fiber: 1 g • Protein: 2 g • Sugar: 14 g • Sodium: 101 mg
Place the 2/3 C. butter into the base of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Beat for about two minutes.
Add in the 3/4 C. brown sugar and 2/3 C. molasses and continue to beat until well combined and creamy.
Beat in the egg and 1 Tsp. vanilla extract for a full two minutes.
In a separate bowl, whisk together the 3 1/2 C. spooned and leveled whole wheat white flour, 1 Tbsp. ginger, 1 Tbsp, cinnamon, 1 Tsp. baking soda, 1/2 Tsp. allspice, 1/2 Tsp. cloves, and 1/2 Tsp. salt.
On low speed, add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix until just combined.
Divide the dough evenly between two pieces of plastic wrap and form them into a disk, covered completely with the plastic wrap.
Place the disks into the fridge to chill overnight.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. and line a couple of baking sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment paper; set aside.
Remove one of the disks from the fridge and roll out on a lightly floured surface to be about 1/4” thick.
Cut out your desired cookie shapes and transfer the cookies to the prepared baking sheets.
Note: I used a 4” gingerbread men cutter and got two dozen cookies out of it.
Place in the oven to bake for about 9 minutes.
Once done, remove from the oven and allow to cool on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to continue cooling.
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I love these things. They are only available seasonally (thank goodness) but I find my buggy steering towards them each year soon as they make their first showing in the grocery store. I’ve always wanted to make my own and wondered if they would be even better at home. Well the good news is, a few years ago I FINALLY got a recipe for them from Mama!
