As the Superbowl is approaching, I see men around me (my hubby included) getting frantically ready for the event.
Cheez-Its? Check. Sour cream? Check.
Sliders, pizza, jalapeño poppers, salsa, beer, and chips? Check.
All of this sounds really good (or not — depending on your current diet), but it lacks something. Something… sweet. Something sweet like… chocolate.

I know, I know.

“Chocolate and football? Isn’t chocolate reserved for when you need some comforting?”

However,  consider this: what about some hot & spicy chocolate? That sounds a bit more appropriate, right?

Right. Well, last Saturday, after making a Hawaiian pizza for my husband, I was left with two things, the first being pineapple and jalapeño leftovers. The second – a craving for dessert.

Initially, I thought of making chocolate cookies with the leftover pineapple. But, then, I had this brilliant idea come to me: if pineapple and jalapeños are a good match for the pizza, why not in the cookie?

If successful, they’d be perfect for the Superbowl too – after all, those are some hot cookies!
I immediately began work on my “experiment.” The result? Cookies with a crunchy exterior, but whose interior is so soft and chocolaty rich, they feel like brownies. Chocolate brownies which, two second after you bite into them, give you a taste of hot summer days. Chocolate brownies which even the guys wouldn’t mind having around the Superbowl snacks table.

Here’s the original recipe I created. Although quite successful, I would slightly alter some of the ingredient quantities for future trials (see my notes), especially since I wasn’t doing any “absolutely precise” measurements this first time.

Pineapple and Jalapeño chocolate cookies

Ingredients

(For 8 thick cookies)

About 1½ cups flour (you’ll need to adjust this according to how much juice your pineapple releases)
½ cup softened unsalted butter
¼ cup mocha cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
¼ cup chopped pineapple
1 tbsp finely chopped jalapeno
¼ cup shredded coconut (optional – if you don’t use it, you might need to further adjust the flour)
¼ cup sugar (while very chocolaty, the cookies were not sugarish at all. If you’d like to sense some more sweetness, I’d advise ½ cup — which I’ll do next time, or even ¾)

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350°F.

2. Mix flour, mocha cocoa powder, coconut, baking soda, sugar, and butter. You should get a typical cookie dough easily shaped into a ball which holds together. (If it seems like it needs a bit of water, wait till next step!)

3. Add pineapple and jalapeño. At this point, either adjust with a bit of water or with more flour if the pineapple has released too much juice. The goal is to have a ball which just holds together — no bits breaking off and “muddiness” either.

4. Roll dough into a log. Slice into 8 equal cookies and place on baking sheet.

5. Bake for about 20 min.