What better way to celebrate and #ChooseLove on Tu B’Av, the Israeli holiday of love which falls on Tuesday, August 4, than with an ooey, gooey, molten chocolate cookie? In fact, this recipe is so easy, and the dough will be stored in your freezer so you can easily bake a few any time your chocolate craving strikes!

Although chocolate has always been associated with love and romance (Montezuma was purported to drink 50 glasses of chili-laced chocolate a day to make him passionate) it is really the Theobromide in cocoa (often found in asthma inhalers) coupled with caffeine that makes one feel amorous. And the Aztecs aside, there were many Jews in history resonsible for the production of chocolate as far back as the 1680s when Benjamin d’Acosta De Andrade developed a method to process cocoa beans so that they could be shipped from South America and ultimately transformed into liquid gold or later, in 1847, into the first eating chocolate.

Famous Jewish chocolate artisans included Franz Sacher, a Jewish Viennese apprentice baker who created the now-famous Sachertorte in 1832. Eli Fromenchenko opened the Elite Chocolate Company in Ramat Gan, Israel, in 1933. In 1938, another Viennese Jew, Stephen Klein, immigrated to New York and opened the first kosher chocolate shop–
Barton’s Salon de Chocolate. And in Israel today, suitors from all over Israel flock to the café called Max Brenner to buy chocolates for the lucky women they will woo on Tu B’Av!

The following recipe is my modern take on the ubiquitous molten chocolate cake but in cookie form. The taste is fantastic but the real treat is that you make the dough, shape it into balls and then freeze them. When you want to serve them, you can pop the frozen balls onto a cookie sheet and bake them for a mere 6-8 minutes. The result is a rich cookie that is firm on the outside and oozes delicious cinnamon and coffee-scented filling when bitten into. You, and your love, will enjoy these, I promise.

Molten Mocha Cinnamon Chocolate Cookies

Yield: About 2 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

• 10 ounces bittersweet chocolate
• 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter
• ¼ cup all purpose flour
• ¼ teaspoon baking powder
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 2 large eggs
• ¾ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon instant espresso
• ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate, either chips or chopped ¼ inch pieces

Directions:

1.  Combine the 10 ounces of chocolate and the butter in a one-quart glass bowl. Microwave this mixture on high for 1 minute. Stir. Microwave for another 30 seconds. Remove, stir until all chocolate is melted and set aside.

2.  Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl and set aside.

3.  Beat eggs and sugar in a mixing bowl until light and lemon colored. Add the espresso, cinnamon and vanilla and beat to combine.

4.  Add the chocolate mixture to the mixing bowl and beat until all egg mixture is incorporated.

5.  Add the flour mixture and mix only until there is no flour visible. Stir in the chopped chocolate or chips. Remove beaters and scrape down sides of bowl. Refrigerate in bowl for 15 minutes.

6.  Using a 1 Tablespoon portion scoop or a rounded measuring spoon, place dough onto a parchment- or foil-lined cookie sheet.

7.  Freeze dough uncovered until very hard. When frozen, remove individual dough balls to a Ziplock freezer bag and freeze until ready to bake.

8.  To bake: Pre-heat oven to 350°F. Place frozen mounds of dough onto a lined cookie sheet and bake for 6-8 minutes (depending on size of the balls) or until the tops of the cookie are firm but very soft to the touch. Cookies will harden a little as they cool.

9.  Let cookies cool for 5 minutes if you want them to be hot and gooey; longer if you want them to hold their shape a little better.

Note: Baked cookies may be refrigerated and then re-heated in a microwave for 20 seconds on high. However, cold, baked cookies are like a cross between a cookie and a truffle and quite delicious!