These dark chocolate brownie cookies are for serious chocolate lovers, only.

They're adapted from a Martha Stewart double chocolate cookie recipe, which is one of the first recipes I ever made. It's stayed in my arsenal for all these years because it comes together fairly quickly--no waiting for butter to soften, no chilling the dough--and deeply satisfies that intense chocolate craving.

I arrived with this gem of a cookie after my usual fiddling with sugar ratios. Most recipes are too sweet for me as written, and I tend to slash the sweetener by half. Martha calls for semisweet chocolate, but I like to create bittersweet by using half unsweetened and half semisweet baking chocolate. You could also use an 80/85% chocolate here, instead. I also reduce the sugar, cutting out 1/2 of a cup.

The result is a dark chocolate cookie with an almost fudgy, brownie-like texture, studded with chocolate chips. Beware--it's easy to keep going with these ones, especially if there's a cold glass of milk around.

Dark Chocolate Brownie Cookies

Adapted from Martha Stewart

Makes 36 cookies

Ingredients:

2 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate (I like to use Ghirardelli since it's easy to find and easy to split into 2 ounces)
2 ounces semisweet baking chocolate (I usually use Ghiradelli semisweet)
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup flour
1/2 cup cocoa (I've used both Dutch-processed and natural--both turn out great!)
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit
Melt together butter and chocolate in a double boiler. I don't have a real one, so I just set a pan on top of another pan that has water in it
Set aside butter and chocolate to cool
Meanwhile, combine flour, baking soda, salt, sugar, and cocoa powder. You can sift, but since I'm lazy, I generally just whisk everything together--it gets the job done!
When the chocolate mixture has cooled, add to the dry ingredients along with vanilla extract
Beat in eggs until combined
Stir in chocolate chips. I generally like to just get in there and mix with my hands, since the dough is pretty stiff at this point
Portion out about a tablespoon of dough per cookie onto a greased baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Try to keep the cookies at least 2 inches apart
Bake for 15 minutes