Hot Chocolate Cookies With a Marshmallow Centre: Fudgy Cocoa Dough, Softly Puffed Top

Some cookie trends spread because they photograph well, and a few spread because they taste like a thing you already love. Hot chocolate cookies with a marshmallow centre manage both. Fast Company reported on 28 October that festive cookie, brownie and pastry videos had drawn about 43.1 million views on TikTok and Instagram since 18 October, and it singled out hot-chocolate cookies with a marshmallow centre, at roughly 1 million Instagram views, among the clips doing well, in a report syndicated by Yahoo.

Younger shoppers are part of why cookies matter to the people who sell them. Innova Market Insights said on 6 October that growth in the US cookie category comes mainly from Gen Z and Millennials, who tend to look for cookies in the bakery rather than the cookie aisle. A cookie that behaves like a mug of cocoa suits that habit.

The cookie here is a dark, fudgy chocolate dough that stays soft in the middle. The marshmallow goes on near the end of the bake: a marshmallow is sugar, water and gelatin whipped to about half air, so it puffs and softens fast in a hot oven but scorches if it goes in too early.

A few details decide whether these work. Cocoa powder dries a dough out, so the butter and brown sugar are generous, and the 30-minute chill lets the flour absorb the moisture so the cookie bakes thick instead of flat. The salt matters more than it looks: it keeps a cocoa-heavy dough from tasting flat and sweet.

Ingredients

Makes 12 large cookies. Total time about 1 hour 10 minutes, including 30 minutes of chilling.

• 115 g unsalted butter, softened
• 150 g light brown sugar
• 50 g caster sugar
• 1 large egg, at room temperature
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 150 g plain flour
• 35 g unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 tsp fine salt
• 100 g dark chocolate chips
• 6 large marshmallows, each cut in half crosswise

Method

1. Beat the butter, brown sugar and caster sugar for 2 to 3 minutes until pale and fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla.
2. Sift in the flour, cocoa, bicarbonate of soda and salt, and fold until no dry streaks remain. Fold in the chocolate chips.
3. Cover the bowl and chill the dough for 30 minutes. This stops the cookies spreading into thin discs.
4. Heat the oven to 180 C (160 C fan) and line two trays with baking paper.
5. Scoop the dough into 12 balls of about 50 g each and set them 6 cm apart on the trays.
6. Bake for 8 minutes, until the edges are set and the centres still look soft.
7. Take the trays out and press a marshmallow half, cut side down, onto the centre of each cookie, pushing in gently.
8. Return to the oven for 2 to 3 minutes, until the marshmallows are puffed and just beginning to colour.
9. Cool on the tray for 10 minutes. Move to a rack, and eat them while the marshmallow is still soft.

Tips, variations and storage

Use full-size marshmallows. Minis melt away into the cookie, and the soft top is the point. If the tops colour too quickly, move the tray down a shelf for the last two minutes.