Frosted Chocolate Drops

These are cake cookies, not snap cookies. The sour cream and milk give the dough a soft, almost-muffin-like crumb that bakes up pillowy and stays tender for days. Add cocoa-bitter unsweetened chocolate, rolled oats for chew, and a pecan-crowned vanilla frosting, and you have something straight out of a 1950s diner case.

The sour cream is doing the same work it does in chocolate cake, tenderizing the gluten and adding a subtle tang that keeps the chocolate flavor from going flat. Pull it from the recipe and you get a dense, dry cookie.

Unsweetened chocolate (not chocolate chips, not cocoa powder) gives the dough a deeper, more grown-up chocolate flavor than a typical drop cookie. It melts cleanly into the butter and sugar and distributes evenly through the dough.

The oats keep these from being just “chocolate cookies." They add a subtle chew and a hint of nuttiness that anchors all that sweetness. Don’t substitute quick oats unless you want a finer, more uniform texture.

Pro Tips

• Cool the melted chocolate before adding to the butter mixture, hot chocolate will scramble the egg
• Drop teaspoonfuls (not tablespoons) for the right cake-cookie proportions, big mounds don’t bake through evenly
• Test for doneness by gently pressing the top, the cookie should spring back, not leave an indent
• Frost only after the cookies are completely cool, warm cookies melt the frosting into a glaze

Variations

• Stir a half cup of chopped toasted pecans into the dough as well as topping with halves for double the nutty crunch
• Add a teaspoon of espresso powder to deepen the chocolate flavor without making them taste like coffee
• Swap the vanilla frosting for cream cheese frosting or a thin chocolate ganache glaze