{Boston Blogger Cookie Swap}: Hot Chocolate Cookies with Toasted Marshmallows

On Sunday Shannon hosted her annual Cookie Swap and I finally made it to the party!  I've been thinking about what to make for quite awhile now and decided on a recipe I saw in my google reader for Hot Chocolate Cookies.  I've seen this recipe a few different places: Dine and Dish, Baked Bree and Tasty Kitchen to name a few.  But the one that really called out to me was from Baking Serendipity.  The reason?  She not only used marshmallows in her recipe... but she toasted them under the broiler first! Genius!  Of course, in true Lizzy fashion I combined a couple of these recipes together to form my own.

Now before I tell you about the recipe, I should mention that I made these cookies with the help of my friend Meg Saturday night around 9pm.  And... well... we almost burnt the house down.  Just so you all know you cannot use WAX PAPER in the same way you would a silicon sheet or parchment paper.  If you do, you may open your oven mid-way through cooking and smoke will take over your house.  Consider yourself warned.  What can I say?  I'm a baking novice.  Too much science to this game : ) But the cookies did not burn!  We salvaged them and well, they are amazing.

Hot Chocolate Cookies
recipe adapted from the sources above
Ingredients:
2 sticks of butter, at room temperature
1 cup of granulated sugar
2/3 cup of brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp of vanilla
3 1/4 cups of flour
1/2 cup of Hot Chocolate Mix (I used Ghiradelli)
1 tsp of salt
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 cups of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup of white chocolate chips
1/2 cup of chocolate chips
1 bag of marshmallows, (use mini if you can, I couldn't find them), toasted
Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and sugars together until smooth.  Then add eggs one at a time and beat in the vanilla until combined.  In a separate bowl, combine flour, hot chocolate mix, salt and baking soda.  Add to wet ingredients in 3 or 4 steps.  Stir well. Toast the regular or mini marshmallows under the broiler with aluminum foil until they start to brown (pay attention!).  Fold the toasted marshmallows into the dough with the different kinds of chips.  Chill the dough for about an hour. Drop the cookie dough by the spoonful onto a baking sheet lined with PARCHMENT PAPER (NOT WAX PAPER!!!). Bake for 9-11 minutes.  Then cool and transfer to a wire rack.

I loved the little bites of toasted marshmallow and the over-abundance of chocolate in this recipe!  And my cookies were perfectly soft- I somehow didn't burn the bottom!  By the last batch I learned that the key to making delicious cookies is to make them REALLY small.  Maybe I should invest in that whole cookie scoop things....

Anyway, these were not the only cookies at the cookie swap.  There were tons of delicious treats!

Bridget's Butterscotch Brownies

Elizabeth's Nutella Oatmeal Cream Pies!
I loved these- reminded me of Little Debbie's Oatmeal Pies from my childhood.  Cannot wait to make these at home!

Melissa’s Chocolate Mint Cookies

Kerstin’s Spiced Caramel Pecan Bars 

Ranjani’s cranberry caramel bars

All pictures below were taken from Cara... She is a much better photographer (and has a better camera) than me!
Joanne's Rainbow Cookies
Cara's Cinnamon Coffee Pecan Cookies and Chocolate Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Lauren's Better than Crack Brownies 

Our hostess Shannon's Pumpkin Blondies and Pumpkin Oats Cookies 

Oh and my cookies again : )  I also made Andes Mint Chocolate Chip cookies as well...

So many delicious cookies to enjoy! Here's a group shot of the bloggers at the party.

Back row: Shannon, Joanne, Kerstin, Ranjani and Elizabeth

Front Row: Bridget, Me and Cara!

And wow, I definitely overindulged quite a bit this weekend.  So much so that my weight gain and how I'm feeling about it all prompted a depressing post on my baby blog. I almost posted on this blog but decided I was being irrational and way too hard on myself.  After some great emails from one of my favorite bloggers Dorothy, I realize now what's important.  So what if I've gained more weight than my other friends who are due around the same time as me.  What's important is realizing the real goal, the real finish line: having a beautiful, healthy baby.  

And with that I'm going to take Dorothy's advice:

"The people who gain weight during pregnancy and don't have it come off are people who aren't active, who aren't healthy and who aren't motivated. You are all of those things. Don't read too much, don't think about it too much - just enjoy the next 20 weeks. Honestly what's a little weight when you have a human growing in you."

She is right. And I feel like a completely different person now than the girl who cried last night trying on dresses feeling too fat.  I forgot about the big picture. And I won't allow myself to do that again!

I apologize for the slight tangent... we were talking about cookies right?

What's your favorite cookie to bake?