Indulgent Chocolate Cookies

Now I know that everyone has those days and sometimes those days come to often. These are my personal cure for when life has me down, or I am really craving something chocolately and delicious! At first glance you would think that there is too much chocolate but there really is no such thing!

Ingredients
6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips
6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken in large pieces
(Recommended brand: Lindt, Godiva)
4 ounces milk chocolate chips
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened and divided
1½ cups all-purpose flour
½ cup unsweetened Dutch-style cocoa
(Recommended brand: Hershey’s European-style)
½ teaspoon baking soda
1½ teaspoons baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
¾ cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed
¾ cup granulated sugar
3 large eggs
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
Vanilla icing (recipe follows)

In the top of a double boiler, melt the chips, chopped chocolate, and 4 tablespoons (½ stick) of the butter. When melted, set aside to cool briefly.
Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt, set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, beat the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter with sugars. When the mixture is the consistency of wet sand, add the eggs one at a time and vanilla. Mix in the slightly cooled chocolate mixture, beating only until combined, don’t over mix. Taking bowl off mixer clean beaters, stir in flour mixture, mixing only until completely combined and no traces of flour appear.
Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 25 minutes, until the mixture can be easily spooned p with an ice cream scoop.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Butter two cookie sheets. Using a 4-teaspoon ice cream scoop, measure out a dozen cookies per sheet. Bake one sheet at a time for about 10 minutes and 30 seconds, just until the cookies have puffed and flattened. Do not over bake; the cookies will firm up upon cooling. Allow the cookies to cool 2 minutes on the cookie sheet then transfer them to racks and allow to cool completely.
Makes 4 dozen

Vanilla Icing
4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, softened
½ cup whipping cream
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2¼ cups confectioners’ sugar or more if needed

Beat the butter until very creamy. Gradually add the cream, vanilla, and confectioners’ sugar and beat well, if necessary add more confectioners’ sugar to the icing. It should be fairly stiff, not soupy. Spread thick layer on each cookie.