Spiced Mocha Chip Cookies

Total Time: 25 mins Preparation Time: 15 mins Cook Time: 10 mins

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour
• 8 teaspoons cocoa powder
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 teaspoon almond extract or 1 teaspoon orange extract, gives a nice flavor,too
• 5 tablespoons instant coffee
• 3 tablespoons warm water
• 2 (10 ounce) bags nestle semi-sweet and chocolate swirled chocolate morsels, divided (or substitute 1-10oz bag of semisweet and 1-10oz bag chips)

Recipe

• 1 preheat oven to 350ºf.
• 2 lightly grease cookie sheet (i like to use multiples, no waiting for cool time) in a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, cinnamon, baking soda and salt.
• 3 in a large bowl, cream butter, brown sugar and sugar together until light and fluffy (this may take several minutes, depending on the strength of your mixer).
• 4 beat in eggs one at a time, mixing well.
• 5 mix in extracts.
• 6 combine instant coffee and water in a small bowl and stir until fully dissolved.
• 7 mix coffee into butter/sugar mixture.
• 8 gradually mix flour mixture into butter mixture.
• 9 set aside 1/2 cup of morsels (for sprinkling and making the cookies pretty), and stir remaining morsels into dough.
• 10 drop by cookie scoop (or by rounded teaspoonfuls) onto prepared pans.
• 11 for visual effect, sprinkle a few of the reserved morsels onto each cookie.
• 12 bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until edges look done but centers appear slightly underbaked (i find that after the first batch, consecutive batches may take as little as 6 minutes to bake- i watch them carefully to prevent overbaking).
• 13 allow to cool on pan for 5 minutes, then transfer cookies to a wire rack to finish cooling (be sure to eat at least one cookie while still warm!).