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These HOT CHOCOLATE COOKIES have the perfect little burst of peppermint in the cookies! They’re topped with gooey marshmallow fluff, dunked in chocolate, and sprinkled with candy cane bits.
My daughter is a hot chocolate fanatic.
You should see our hot chocolate packet stash in the pantry. It’s honestly ridiculous, because she’s very particular about the hot cocoa being just the right amount of creamy and chocolaty. We’ve basically bought and tried every single hot cocoa on the market at this point. 😉
I probably need to perfect and share a hot cocoa recipe, right? 😉
Which means that these hot cocoa cookies were a major thing in our house. We found this recipe in a Taste of Home magazine and it’s pretty perfect!
There is peppermint in the cookies and crushed candy canes on top. But, if you’re not into chocolate and mint, you can swap the peppermint for vanilla and skip the candy canes altogether.
How to Make Hot Cocoa Cookies:
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Beat: While your oven is preheating, start by adding the butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and beat until light and creamy. Beat in the egg and add the peppermint extract to give these cookies their signature taste.
Mix: Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda to the mixing bowl and combine well to finish making your chocolate peppermint cookie dough.
Scoop: The easiest way to portion the dough is to use a cookie scoop and space each ball of dough about two inches apart. Use a parchment paper lined baking sheet for best results.
My Favorite Cookie Scoop!
Cookie scoops make cookie baking so easy! Perfectly portion balls of dough every time! We use these for making meatballs, portioning out muffin batter, and more!
Bake: Bake for 10-12 minutes and then allow to cool for 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack to finish cooling. Resist eating the cookies and move on to the next step to finish the topping.
Top: These hot chocolate cookies wouldn’t be complete without a marshmallow topping! Add marshmallow fluff to a ziploc or piping bag and snip off the corner. Squeeze a blob right into the center of each cooled cookie.
Dunk: Melt the chocolate chips in the microwave until smooth and then dip half of the cookie into the melted chocolate and place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper.
Top: Sprinkle the cookie with the crushed candy canes while the chocolate is still warm and then allow them to set until the chocolate has hardened.
Helpful TipS!
- You can store these in an air-tight container for up to 4 days.
- Unless you want your other cookies to acquire a peppermint taste, it is best to not store them in the same container with other cookies.
- Don’t love peppermint? Use vanilla extract instead and swap the candy cane bits with toffee bits.
More cookie recipes!
- Banana Oatmeal Cookies
- Air Fryer Cookies
- Jif Peanut Butter Cookies
- Brookies Cookies
- Keto Cookie Dough
Peppermint Hot Chocolate Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup butter softened
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon peppermint extract
- 2 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup baking cocoa
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup marshmallow fluff
- 11 ounces milk chocolate chips
- ½ cup finely crushed peppermint candies
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Add the butter and sugar to a mixing bowl and beat until light and creamy. Beat in the egg and peppermint extract.
- Add the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda to the mixture and mix well.
- Use a medium cookie scoop to drop rounds of cookie dough onto the prepared cookie sheet about 2 inches apart.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes.
- Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.
- Add the marshmallow fluff to a plastic bag and squeeze into one corner. Snip off the tip of the corner and squeeze the marshmallow fluff onto the center of each cookie, about 1 teaspoon per cookie.
- Melt the chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl, stirring every 30 seconds, until smooth.
- Dip half of each cookie into the melted chocolate and place on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Immediately sprinkle with the peppermint candies.
- Let set until the chocolate has hardened before storing in an air-tight container for up to 4 days.
Lisa says
These cookies are a great idea, however, I followed the recipe exactly as written and ended up with a very dry powdery dough. I looked up the recipe on another site and the comments about the dough was the same, but someone mentioned to add 2 tablespoons of water, which I did. The dough came together, but when I baked them the dough hardly spread and the cookies were very dry. The taste was okay, but the texture not so much. I was making these as a gift for my neighbor, but will have to come up with something else as these are not gift worthy.
Karly says
Oh, I’m sorry to hear these didn’t work out for you. We haven’t found these to be dry or crumbly. You do want to make sure that you’re measuring the flour and cocoa powder properly – spooning it in and leveling it off so that you’re not ending up with more than you should. You could also try adding an extra egg yolk, if you want a richer, more moist and cake-y cookie.
Donna says
Does the Marshmallow Fluff get hard? Need to know if I can stack these cookies in a container.
Karly says
Hi Donna! It does crust over on the top, so you can stack them.
Donna says
THANKS! Just what I needed to know. Happy Holidays!!
Lia says
Hi, can I omit the peppermint or replace it with something else? Thank you!
Karly says
Hi Lia! Yes, as written in the blog post, you can leave it out. Swap with vanilla. 🙂
Lia says
Thanks!
Rene McCrief says
The recipe dont tell how much cocoa to put in recipe.Theres only a question? So how many cups of cocoa does this recipe require?
Karly says
Sorry about that! My recipe card always eats the 1/3 numbers. It’s 1/3 cup cocoa powder. Updated the card too. 🙂
Barb Brower says
question. what is amount of flour and cocoa to use. recipe has ?
Karly says
Sorry about that! My recipe card always eats the 1/3 numbers. It’s 2 1/3 cups flour and 1/3 cup cocoa powder. Updated the card too. 🙂