Double Chocolate Greek Yogurt Cookies

The bakery's Christmas season has begun, and with it the particular madness of a Mexican bakery in December: tamale orders, buñuelo orders, rosca de reyes orders for January, and the regular customers who want their regular conchas plus everything Christmas. I hired a temporary holiday helper — a college student named Marcos from UTEP who needs money and doesn't mind 4 AM and who looks at Sofia with the dazed expression of a twenty-year-old boy confronted by an eleven-year-old girl who knows more about bakery operations than he does. Sofia ignores him. She is too busy for boys. She is too busy for most things that are not bread.

The tamale orders are coming in. Fifteen orders this week for Christmas Eve pickup. Each order is three to five dozen. I am doing the math and the math says I need to make approximately seven hundred tamales in the week before Christmas, which is insane and also exactly what Rosa used to do — she made a thousand tamales every Christmas, for the neighbors, the church, the family, anyone who showed up, and she did it in a kitchen the size of a closet with a single stove and no help except whatever children were old enough to spread masa. I have a commercial kitchen. I have employees. I have Sofia. I have no excuse to make fewer tamales than a woman in a cinder block house with no hot water.

Diego is building Christmas presents. Actual presents, from scratch. He showed me his workshop — the corner of his bedroom that has become a disaster zone of wires, batteries, cardboard, and tape — and he is making a lamp for Isabella (with LED lights he wired himself), a jewelry box for Sofia (from a cigar box with a latch he engineered), and "something secret" for me that he won't show me. He is eight and he is building Christmas presents from garbage and it is the most Diego thing I can imagine and I am so proud of him I could burst.

Isabella has started volunteering at the church's Christmas food drive. She goes after school on Wednesdays and sorts donated food into boxes for families who need it. She came home last week and said, "Mom, some of the families are like we were," and I said, "Like we were when?" and she said, "Like we were when you first came here. Before the bakery. When money was tight." She is thirteen and she remembers. She remembers the years before the bakery, the years of cleaning houses and stretching dollars, and she is sorting food for families who are in that same tight place, and the circle of that — from receiving to giving, from needing to providing — is the most American story I know, and also the most Mexican one.

I made champurrado this week — the thick, warm corn-based Mexican hot chocolate that Rosa made on cold mornings, the one that tastes like a blanket in a cup. Champurrado is masa harina cooked with milk and piloncillo and Mexican chocolate and cinnamon, stirred constantly until it thickens to the consistency of a warm hug. I served it at the bakery and the construction workers — the ones who come in at 6 AM with cold hands and dust on their jackets — held the cups and closed their eyes and I could see the warmth moving through them, and I thought: this. This is what the bakery is for. Not for profit or success or newspaper articles. For this. For the cup in the cold hands. For the warmth.

After a week of stirring champurrado at 6 AM and watching construction workers close their eyes around a warm cup, I had Mexican chocolate on my mind in a way I couldn’t shake — and when that happens, it bleeds into everything I bake. Diego asked if we could make something chocolatey together on Sunday, something just for us and not for an order, and these cookies were the answer: simple enough for an eight-year-old engineer to help with, rich enough to feel like the holidays, and ready in the time it takes to get Sofia to stop reorganizing the supply shelf. The Greek yogurt keeps them soft and fudgy in a way that reminds me — just a little — of that thick, warm cup.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 12 min | Total Time: 27 min | Servings: 24 cookies

Ingredients

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup plain full-fat Greek yogurt
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat oven. Heat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Mix dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt until evenly combined.
Cream butter and sugar. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter and granulated sugar together with a hand mixer or stand mixer on medium speed for 2–3 minutes, until light and fluffy.
Add wet ingredients. Add the Greek yogurt, egg, and vanilla extract to the butter mixture. Beat on medium speed until fully incorporated and smooth, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Combine wet and dry. Add the flour mixture to the wet mixture and stir with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until just combined — do not overmix.
Fold in chocolate chips. Gently fold in the chocolate chips until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Scoop and space. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart. The dough will be soft; this is normal.
Bake. Bake for 10–12 minutes, until the edges are set and the centers still look slightly underdone. They will firm up as they cool.
Cool. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. For fudgiest texture, do not overbake.

Nutrition (per serving)

Double Chocolate Greek Yogurt Cookies — The Same Mexican Chocolate That Goes Into the Champurrado