Yuletide Dark Chocolate Delights

What do hiking, Christmas cookies and bear poo have in common? This recipe of course! Here in our home of Big Bear Lake, California, I’ve spent a lot of time out on the absolutely not snowy trails with my favorite hiking partner, my two-year-old Catahoula. Are the trails snowy? No, not at all. Does it feel holly and jolly and like Christmastime? Well, maybe just a bit. Christmas sweaters, holly jolly hats and forced Christmas cheer helps us forget that, why no, it’s not looking good for a white Christmas season here in So Cal. Without any snowstorm on the horizon, I’m just saying, it could definitely feel way more Christmas-y if we just had a little bit of the white stuff and I don’t mean eggnog. Also, these Midnight Noel Sandwich Cookies do help me get into he holiday spirit. Or maybe that was just two days straight of baking up 14 different batches of Christmas cookies.

After the Snowmageddon our small mountain towns received two winters ago, so many mountain residents are kind of over snow days but I’m not one of them. The pup and I have been out hiking every day, sans snowshoes. And maybe we stop and do a snow dance most days. Because somebody has to! I can’t just spend my days shoving these Dark chocolate winter wonders at my face!

These dark chocolate Holiday hug cookies started out as cutout Christmas trees. I had plans to frost them with this dark chocolate whipped icing and then add festive holiday sprinkles. Well, when I removed these dark chocolate cookies from the oven and they looked like bear scat. My plans had gone arye. However, it was very on-brand for myself, being that I am Big Bear Lake’s most popular hiking guide. Especially as the ski town I live in was named for the long-deceased Grizzly bear.

Hmm, should I sell Bear Scat Christmas Cookies? I mean, people purchase dark chocolate “Coal” at Christmas time, right? I decided to rebrand these seriously decadent desserts and not offend anyone this holiday season. Just because my family thinks poop jokes are funny, I know not everyone does.

Merry Christmas from the Hungry Mountaineer and some Bear Scat Christmas cookies.

Best Dark Chocolate Sandwich Cookies Eva

1/2 cup organic sugar

1 cup butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup of Hershey’s dark chocolate powder

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups of white flour

Put your cookie dough in plastic wrap, shaped like a thin log. Put this in the fridge for at least two hours. When you are ready to bake the cookies, remove the dough from the fridge. Preheat your oven to 375. Cut thin slices of cookie dough as the cookie dough is still very cold. Bake for 16 minutes at 325.

Whipped Chocolate Frosting

3/4 cups unsalted butter

3/4 cup Valhrona chocolate

1/2 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

In a saucepan, slowly melt the butter. Add in the chocolate chips. Turn the heat down to low and stir just until melted. Put this in the fridge to solidify. Remove from the fridge and return the chocolate mixture to room temperature. Add to your stand-alone mixer and beat for just one minute. Mix in the powdered sugar and the vanilla.

Once your cookies are cool, layer the frosting in between the two cookies. Try not to shove all these cookies at your mouth.