Need a new cookie for the holidays?
These Chocolate Stuffed Christmas Cookies are perfect!
This post is in conjunction with The Great Minerva Dairy Cookie Challenge, but all opinions are my own. Affiliate links are enclosed for your convenience.
Whether you are ready or not it is time to start planning your holiday baking. Remember cookies freeze fabulously! Feel free to bake almost any cookie, plate it, wrap it and forget about it until all your holiday parties start filling the calendar.
Minerva Dairy recently contacted me to see if I'd be interested in participating as an online influencer {did you know that is the proper term for a blogger?} during their holiday cookie exchange and challenge.
Umm...hello, yes! Nothing kicks up my fancy like holiday baking. I was basically a shoe in. These Chocolate Stuffed Christmas Cookies are a new creation of mine and trust me when I say you NEED to include them on your holiday cookie platter.
Everyone who visits The Great Minerva Dairy Cookie Challenge between now and December 15 can vote for their favorite cookie. Their very own Venae Watts, a 5th generation family member of Minerva Dairy, has created her own holiday cookies to go along side-by-side with the food blogger's cookies {i.e. ME}. Each entry gives you a chance to win FREE BUTTER for a year!
You can vote HERE.
Have fun taking a look at everyone's weekly holiday creations!
Now, on to MY cookies, shall we?
If you are a frequent reader of my food blog than you know I have three kids under the age of 7 and I'm a stay-at-home-working-mom. Needless to say my time can often be limited. And if not limited I have kids under foot, including a dog who is consistently laying on my feet every time they stop moving.
Therefore complicated cookies aren't really my thing. And even though these are "stuffed" cookies they are easy!
Take some help with a devil's food cake mix. Yes, I said a cake mix! Doctoring it up to make it a cookie is easy. And quick! In fact, now I'm dreaming up how to make a million stuffed cookies with all the flavored mixes.
The cookies are a bit crunchy on the sides, yet soft in the middle and keep their shape beautifully. The filling you ask? Well, I truly believe it is the BEST part. Cream cheese, powdered sugar, chopped pecans and chocolate chips.
It's like eating a whoopie pie in cookie form.
Dang, delicious.
Chocolate Stuffed Christmas Cookies
2 eggs
2/3 c. canola or vegetable oil
8 oz. cream cheese, softened
3/4 c. powdered sugar
1/2 c. chopped pecans
1/2 c. chocolate chips
food coloring {optional}
1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a large cookie sheet with cooking spray.
2. In a bowl mix together the cake mix, eggs and oil until combined. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Using a medium sized cookie scoop, scoop out the cookie dough onto the baking sheet filling the cookie sheet with 20 cookies. Spray the bottom of a glass with cooking spray and gently press on the cookies to flatten them. Bake for 10 minutes. Allow to cool.
4. While baking in a bowl combine the softened cream cheese, powdered sugar, pecans and chocolate chips. Optional add red or green food coloring.
5. When the cookies have cooled spread the cream cheese filling on the bottom of one cookie, topping it with another. This recipe will make 10 stuffed cookies, or 20 if you use a smaller cookie scoop.
6. Keep refrigerated. Or freeze among wax paper in a tightly sealed container for up to 1 month.
A big shout out to Minerva Dairy for including me in this fun holiday baking project!
