During the coldest months of the year, we often enjoy a mug of hot chocolate as dessert after dinner.

While the liquefied cocoa delivers the sweet taste I crave, it does leave me sometimes wanting more to sink my teeth into. Thinking about that recently made me wonder, “What would happen if I put hot chocolate mix into a cookie recipe?”

I’m not the first to do it. You’ll find plenty of other recipes on the internet for cookies with hot chocolate mix. But I wanted to be sure the recipe I used had all the basic ingredients for a regular easy-to-make cookie with the added element of the cocoa drink mix.

I settled on the combination we share here, and I absolutely love it. This recipe for Hot Chocolate Cookies offers the chocolate-y sweetness and slight saltiness of a great mug of cocoa in solid food form. That mix leaves me more satisfied when I’m done with dessert!

NOTE: Our local Walmart store sells $5 tubs of Swiss Miss hot chocolate mix that contain about 30 servings of cocoa powder. Using that means we scoop out a quarter cup at a time instead of tearing open packet after packet. It’s a better deal for our money, and it also makes using cocoa in a recipe like this one much easier!

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Hot Chocolate Cookies

What You Need:

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup hot chocolate mix

1 1/4 teaspoon salt

1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda

1 cup butter (2 sticks)

1 cup granulated sugar

2/3 cup light brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

OPTIONAL: 1 1/2 cups freeze-dried mini marshmallows

What You Do:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees, and cover baking sheet with parchment paper for easy cleanup. Be sure to use parchment and not wax paper. The wax paper will burn in the oven.

2. Mix flour, hot chocolate mix, salt and baking soda in a bowl until well-blended.

3. Cream 2 sticks of butter with granulated sugar and brown sugar in a stand mixer, if you have one. If not, you can use a hand mixer or old-fashioned elbow grease in a mixing bowl.

4. Add eggs one at a time and vanilla into mixing bowl with butter and sugars.

5. Slowly blend flour and hot chocolate mixture into mixing bowl.

6. Ensure all ingredients are fully mixed well and no flour is visible.

7. OPTIONAL: Add 1 1/2 cups freeze-dried mini marshmallows. You need these marshmallows because other soft marshmallows tend to melt incorrectly within such a recipe. The crunch of the freeze-dried marshmallows also lend a nice texture to the cookie!

8. Bake 10 minutes for softer cookies and up to 12 minutes for more crisp cookies.

9. Allow to cool and settle for 5 minutes.

10. Serve with a glass of cold milk.

NOTE: You can also add 1 cup semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips to this recipe if you want a chocolate overload.