All good dinner parties need treat bags, right?  We hadn’t really considered it when first planning our menu.  But it is a funny story, how these particular treat bags came to be.  My 13-year-old daughter has been learning her own way around the kitchen and has discovered that baking is her forte.  For her last birthday I bought her a copy of Joy the Baker’s Homemade Decadence, because really, it is never too early to start your cookbook library-even if you are only turning 13.  (P.S.-If you don’t have this one, it is a must have!)  My daughter has been slightly obsessed with a recipe in this cookbook for Dark Chocolate Truffle Cookies.  I must admit, they didn’t look like much, so when she chose them for her weekend project several months ago, I wasn’t super excited.  I’m not usually too moved by anything dusted with powdered sugar.  However, when I tasted these gooey little bombs, I quickly changed my mind.  Pure heaven.  My daughter has now made the recipe many, many times and they definitely rise to the occasion.  Every time.

When my daughter found out Holly and I were hosting a dinner party, she offered to make a batch of these Dark Chocolate Truffle Cookies for us.  We already had plans for our dessert course (coming soon!), but what would be a better take home remembrance of a really fun night than a bag of cookies?  We took her up on her offer.  She set to work, crafting the cookies, and I set to work crafting some bags for the cookies to be packaged in.  I’m pretty pleased with what we came up with, and I think our dinner guests were too!

So now that our dinner is over, I can only hope that all of our guests are happily treating themselves to some Dark Chocolate Truffle Cookies.  Preferably with a nice glass of wine.  I recommend you all try them too.  Your friends will thank you.

And a special thanks to Joy the Baker (Joy Wilson).

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Dark Chocolate Truffle Cookies

These are rich, gooey, chocolate filled bites of heaven.

Course Dessert

Servings 18 cookies

Author Joy Wilson (Joy the Baker) from Homemade Decadence

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup unsweetened Dutch-processed cocoa powder this can be been somewhat hard to find, you can substitute Hershey's Special Dark cocoa powder which is a blend of natural and Dutch processed cocoas-this has worked fine for us
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter room temperature
• 1/3 cup 3 ounces chopped dark chocolate (we have used both 70% and 72% cacao chocolate bars-both have worked well)
• 1 large egg
• 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup confectioners' sugar you can likely get away with less of this as this is just to roll the cookies in

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 375ºF.
2. In a medium bowl ,combine flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt.
3. Chop the room temperature butter into small pieces and rub into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
4. Mix in the chopped dark chocolate.
5. In a small bowl, mix together the egg and vanilla.
6. Pour the egg mixture into the chocolate mixture and mix until moistened.
7. Press the dough into a ball (you'll have to get your hands dirty here if you haven't already).
8. Wrap the ball of dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
9. Put the confectioners' sugar in a shallow bowl.
10. Using a tablespoon, form balls of the refrigerated chocolate mixture.
11. Roll the ball in the confectioners' sugar.
12. Place the sugar covered ball on a parchment lined baking sheet.
13. Repeat with the remaining chocolate mixture, rolling in confectioners' sugar before placing on baking sheet.
14. Bake about 10 minutes leaving the cookies just a bit undercooked on the insides.
15. Cool on the pan for a few minutes before finishing cooling on a cooling rack.
16. These are fabulous served warm, and almost just as good eaten over the next 4 days (store in an airtight container).