Ah, Valentine’s Day—the holiday of love, and everyone’s favorite holiday, right?! 😉 When I think of Valentine’s Day, I always find it fun to take a trip down memory lane, back to the good old days when we were kiddos and this day was spent slipping Lion King and Lisa Frank valentines into our classmates’ hand-decorated Valentine shoe boxes. Back when your only concern was not being that kid, you know the one… the one that that thought it was okay to give just a valentine with no candy. No candy? Like, really??
Fast forward about 20 years to present day, and here I am. Still openly judging my husband if he shows up with flowers and no chocolate. But he knows me better than that, and knows I’d always choose dessert over flowers. Or wine. Do I have wine as an option? If so, rosé over roses for sure.
Regardless of your plans on Valentine’s Day, I vote these cookies should definitely be a part of your evening. Make them to share with your hubby or significant other, or share them with your girlfriends for an evening of romcoms and calories.
These cookies are fudgey, chocolatey deliciousness and I promise you won’t regret making them. Well, if you’re trying to lose weight, don’t make them. I promise you will definitely regret it, because they are real, real good. Just being honest with ya!
Because I am gluten free by design, and not by choice, I made these with gluten free flour. However, this recipe should work just great with non-gluten free flour, so if you try it out, please let me know how it goes!
Chocolate Valentine Cookies
Ingredients
- 3 cups gluten free flour [King Arthur Measure for Measure Flour]
- 1 cup cocoa powder
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1 cup butter, softened/at room temperature
- 3 eggs
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup peanut butter chips
- 3/4 cup Valentine’s Day M&Ms
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350˚.
- Using a stand mixer, cream together your butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar until well-combined.
- Add your vanilla extract and eggs to your butter mixture and mix until incorporated.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together your cocoa powder, gluten free flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.
- Add your dry ingredients to your mixing bowl little by little, keeping the speed of the stand mixer on low. Continue to add until all ingredients have been completely mixed in.
- Next, add in your M&Ms and peanut butter chips. At this point your batter is pretty thick – you may want to combine these mix-ins by hand, especially if you do not have a heavy duty mixer.
- Once all of your mix-ins have been evenly distributed throughout the dough, line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Use a cookie scoop or ice cream scoop to measure out your cookies. I used an ice cream scoop, just because big cookies are more fun! Using an ice cream scoop will give you about 18 big cookies.
- Bake cookies for about 17 minutes [keep in mind, time will vary depending on the size of your cookies]. You want your cookies to be slightly soft when they come out of the oven.
- Allow cookies to cool on the baking sheet once removed from the oven. This will help them firm up a bit.