Chocolate Chipotle Truffle Cookies

Ingre­di­ents

Cookie dough:
• 2 3/4 cups all pur­pose flour
• 2 tea­spoons cream of tartar
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
• 1/2 tea­spoon kosher salt
• 2 tea­spoons cinnamon
• 4 oz. good qual­ity bit­ter­sweet (60%) choco­late, melted (fol­low instruc­tions in this post)
• 1 1/3 cups unsalted butter–softened
• 1 1/3 cups gran­u­lated sugar
• 2 eggs
Truf­fle center:
• 5 oz. good qual­ity bit­ter­sweet (60%) chocolate
• 1/4 cup cream
• 1 table­spoon unsalted butter–softened
• 1/4 to 1/2 tea­spoons chipo­tle chile pow­der (or some­where in between–depending on your taste. I used 1/2 teaspoon)

Instruc­tions

1. Sift together the flour, cream of tar­tar, bak­ing soda, salt, and cin­na­mon. Set aside.
2. Cream the but­ter and sugar together until fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beat­ing after each addi­tion. Add the melted choco­late. (which you have melted fol­low­ing the instruc­tions in this post)
3. Mix choco­late in and then grad­u­ally add the dry ingredients.
4. Let the dough chill for 2–3 hours.
Mean­while, make the truffles:
5. In a small saucepan, place the cream and heat just until barely boil­ing. Pull off the heat and add the chopped choco­late and 1 table­spoon of soft­ened but­ter. Just let it sit for 5–7 min­utes until all the choco­late has melted. Stir together and pour into a small bowl and refrig­er­ate for 2–3 hours.
Ready to bake:
6. Remove the truf­fle mix­ture from the fridge. With a small spoon, scoop up enough truf­fle to make a ball the size of a small mar­ble. Set these on a plate as you make them and put in fridge to chill while you scoop the dough.
7. Scoop chilled dough with a medium (#40) cookie scoop. Form all the balls at once.
8. The dough will be firm, but not dry and crumbly.
9. Take each ball and flat­ten out into a cir­cle about a 1/2 inch thick.
10. Place one chilled truf­fle “mar­ble” in the cen­ter of the flat­tened dough.
11. Using your fin­gers, gen­tly mold the dough around the truf­fle. It feels and acts a lit­tle like clay. Try not to flat­ten the truf­fle as you work.

12. When truf­fle is com­pletely cov­ered, (inspect for cracks), roll it around in your palms until it is smooth and evenly round.
13. Place on a bak­ing sheet pre­pared with a parch­ment paper liner, or a sil­pat liner.
14. If you can tell which side of the ball has the thicker layer of dough, (usu­ally NOT where you cov­ered the truf­fle) place that side on the bot­tom. It’s bet­ter to have truf­fle ooz­ing out the top than the bot­tom if it’s going to ooze at all. The truf­fle layer flat­tens out along with the cookie, dis­trib­ut­ing the chipo­tle fla­vor pretty well through most of the cookie.
15. Let the unbaked cookie balls sit in the fridge while the oth­ers are baking.
16. Bake in a pre-heated 350 degree F. oven for 8–9 min­utes. The cookie will just begin to crack and will still look slightly soft and doughy at the center.
17. Remove the pan and let the cook­ies rest for 5 min­utes before trans­fer­ring to a cool­ing rack.