Holiday baking means the world to me. It’s a sentiment that’s been with me since I was little, since my own mother turned our kitchen into a treat-and-magic manufactory.
Baking an almost obscene variety of cookies and spreading them as far and wide as possible is a tradition that I carried into my own home, long before my son.
But this year, this tradition means even more.
A few days after Thanksgiving last year, we got the test results back from Leo’s first-ever blood test. They revealed that he was having allergic responses to literally every food he was eating. These were likely the cause of his eczema outbreaks. That night, after making one of the most bland and bowls of steamed carrots, chicken and rice I could imagine, I sat down on the stairs in our basement and cried. I cried for my sweet son and the discomfort that must be coursing through his body. I cried for the possibility that he would have to navigate his life with extreme food fears and restrictions. And I cried for my holiday cookie traditions – they were dead in the water.
What followed were several months of consulting with all of the experts we could. We spoke with the most renown allergist in Colorado who was flabbergasted. Our Chinese medicine practitioner prescribed herbs that only made the rashes worse. And, spent hours with our Functional Medicine doctor who turned to me to ask what we should do. And so, I turned to Ayurveda.
We made substantial shifts to our diets, made adjustments to Leo’s environment and our lifestyle practices to bring his body back into balance, to ground his immune and nervous system.
It was challenging, made us feel more tender and vulnerable than any of us had ever felt. And, it worked.
The beginning of December marked 9 months since we’d made the meaningful shifts. I sat on our basement stairs one afternoon a few weeks ago and cried happy tears as I listened to Leo munch on a homemade cookie while sipping warm almond hot cocoa with my husband upstairs. He’s able to eat anything he wants now, his skin is clear and beautiful, and he’s thriving more completely than any other 2.8 year old I know. I couldn’t be more proud, more grateful, more excited to eat and show him the world, with reckless abandon.
And so this year’s holiday baking extravaganza is extra meaningful. It’s the first time since starting solid foods that Leo can really enjoy some of these special, edible magic moments made in my kitchen. Over the next week I’ll literally bake up a storm and deliver to our friends near and far – some of the cookies I’ve been baking for years, and some of them are brand new. These Molten Midnight Crinkle Cookies are the latter and they fit right into the collection.
The swirl of cookies and treats that parades out of my kitchen this time of year might seem a little bit unwieldy, but I promise there are rules.
First, no chocolate chip cookies. Or peanut butter cookies. Or cookies that you can eat at any time of year. This season is for really special cookies.
Second, the ingredients and the recipe are what make cookies great – not the sparkles. Start with great ingredients, and a great formula, and your cookies will shine. (Hint: search “cookies” in the Recipe Library to get the full collection of my favorite recipes – ever growing of course.)
Third, mix it up and have fun. I try not to bake more than one cookie using any single ingredient or of a certain type. So there’s one sugar cookie, one sablé cookie, something chocolate, something fruity, something nutty…and I try to have a variety of shapes and colors. This dense, chewy, rich and chocolatey crinkle cookie certainly fits a bill in the cookie box!
Are so dense, fudgy, chewy and divine! Plus they’re easy to make, and everyone (even Leo!) loves them.
You’ll find the greatest success with these if you pay close attention to a few things. First, weight your ingredients – it makes a massive difference with ingredients like cacao and flour, and not measuring can mean a flop. Next, know that not all chocolate is created equally. In the Recipe Notes below, I share my favorite chocolate sources; I like a chocolate that’s 72% or darker here, and especially one sweetened with coconut sugar! Lastly, be attentive when you’re mixing and cooling these. You don’t want to overmix the dough as the cookies with lose their chew. The same holds true for if they get dried all the way on the cookie racks – we don’t want them firming up or drying out!
Lastly, I hope you love and adore this one as much as we do.
New traditions unfolding all the time!
Enjoy these!
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