German Chocolate Cake Cookies

Today is my father-in-law’s birthday.  (Happy birthday Big Daddy!)  Two years ago he was visiting during his birthday, along with the other two sons and their wives, so I decided to make him his favorite, German Chocolate Cake.  The entire family fell in love with the recipe, and I made a mental note to create a new tradition to bake it for him every year.

The mental note was forgotten.  Well, not forgotten, but it wasn’t put into practice.  We moved to the opposite end of the country the following year, so a visit during his birthday was more difficult.  This year we are closer now that we’re in Mississippi, but we are still a flight’s distance away and won’t be seeing them until May.  I couldn’t go another year without continuing (rather, starting) the German Chocolate Cake tradition.  But, a cake wasn’t possible. So, last week I decided to whip up these cookies and send them to him in the mail. The next best thing, in my opinion.  🙂

I was so excited when I found this recipe.  Usually I’m a little skeptical when recipes are rated with 5 stars, but for some reason I knew these were going to be true to their high rating.  They are really good!  The batter includes all of the ingredients you love in a German Chocolate Cake, but packs it into a mouth-watering cookie.  With a texture that is thick yet somehow gooey, I couldn’t stop eating them myself!

If you shape these into heaping tablespoon sized dough balls, the recipe yields around 4 dozen cookies.  However, please hear me when I say…make them even bigger!  After baking the first two dozen as normal sized cookies, I decided to try shaping the rest of the dough into huge cookies (because we all know that BIG cookies are BETTER) and they were even more wonderful in the large!  So, grab a 4-Tablespoon sized cookie scoop and spoon the enormous amount of dough onto the cookie sheet (leveling off the dough in the scoop to ensure equal portions) and just see how fabulous a bigger cookie can be.  At this size, they were similar to the cookies you find at Panera Bread or Paradise Bakery.  You feelin’ me?

Hope you enjoyed these, even a few days old in the snail mail, Big Daddy!

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German Chocolate Cake Cookies

These are one of my favorite cookies, a chocolaty, nutty and coconuty delight!

Prep Time 10 minutes

Cook Time 10 minutes

Total Time 20 minutes

Servings 4 dozen small cookies, or 18+ very large delicious cookies

Ingredients

• 1 cup unsalted butter , at room temperature
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened baking cocoa powder
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• Pinch of salt
• 1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips (I recommend Ghiardhelli bittersweet)
• 1 cup shredded sweetened coconut flakes
• 1 cup chopped pecans

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone liner.
2. In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugars until creamy. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, then the vanilla. In a separate medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients. Blend until combined, then stir in the chocolate chips, coconut and pecans.
3. For smaller cookies, drop the dough by heaping tablespoons onto the prepared baking sheets (12 cookies per sheet). For large cookies (my preference), use a 4-Tablespoon sized cookie scoop (leveling off the dough in the scoop to ensure equal portions) and drop dough balls onto cookie sheets (8 cookies per sheet). Bake small cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, and large cookies for 12 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the cookie sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
4. Adapted from Sunny Anderson via The Food Network

Recipe Notes

I prefer making the large cookies.