Today I had big plans to sew up a rectangular, boxy top courtesy of the free tutorial from Cotton & Curls and some leftover rayon jersey in my fabric stash. But I spent most of the day farting around on the Internet (where does the time go??) and started to get that anxious feeling you get when you haven’t been very productive and the day is slipping away. I got out my serger to get started on the top only to realize I really didn’t have enough leftover fabric to make the top after all. Instead I decided to get my bake on and try the recipe for Chocolate Diablo Cookies I came across in last May’s Chatelaine magazine that I salvaged from my mom’s house on my last visit. Like my pants aren’t already Christmas-tight enough.

Well, Christmas-tight pants be damned, because these cookies are AWESOME. With lots of cocoa (although I didn’t have quite enough and had to throw in some hot chocolate mix I had on hand), cayenne pepper, ginger, cinnamon, and some chunky kosher salt sprinkled on the top, they make a great treat for a cold winter day. They remind me of Soma Chocolatemaker‘s Mayan Hot Chocolate only in cookie form.

The recipe is supposed to make 12 cookies — but it seems pretty excessive to make each cookie with a full one-quarter cup of cookie dough resulting in a rather hefty 370 calories per cookie. Instead I made about twice as many cookies, making it a bit easier to control portions. Assuming the eater can limit themselves to one cookie. Ahem. Eventually all these calories will be in my belly one way or another, so whatever. I also substituted ground ginger (dry) for the ginger juice/fresh ginger called for in the recipe.

Sorry about the crummy iPhone pictures.

BTW, if you ever bake cookies (even if you just buy those premade cookie dough rolls), treat yourself to the joys of parchment paper if you don’t already. Anything you bake on parchment paper will slide right off, no spatula needed, and cleaning up your cookie sheet after is easy. Or, if you have cookie sheets like mine, complete with baked on grease, fish oil, and rust, you’ll definitely want to protect your cookies with the parchment paper. Just be sure you get parchment — it’s different from wax paper.

Meanwhile my clever husband was exercising his creative muscles in his workshop where is creating a sort of flower-shaped table he designed himself, using wood from a neighb0ur’s tree. He’s flattened out four slabs from the trunk which will form the ‘petals’ and is doing lots of math and precise cutting to make mortise-and-tenon joints. Can’t wait to see how this will turn out.

Let me know what you think of these Chocolate Diablo Cookies if you try them!