I have been stowing a ton of ideas away in my mind for Halloween! It's a holiday that is made to bake with activated charcoal to give everything a touch of darkness. And so are these cocoa cookies, which are really double chocolate — once from the cocoa in the cookie batter, and twice from the semisweet and white chocolate chips scattered throughout each cookie.

Oh yeah, and for some extra Halloween fun, they are filled with pumpkin instead of butter, making them not a bomb of sugary sweetness, to counteract the candy that's lurking around every corner.

Baking with activated charcoal

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Black cocoa powder

You can skip the activated charcoal and substitute the regular cocoa for black coca for a similar look. If you're doing this, add 2 extra teaspoons of flour to make up for the difference in not adding the activated charcoal.

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Halloween Cocoa Cookies

It's dark on Halloween! That means you'll need these black Halloween cocoa cookies baked with activate charcoal to match the deep of the night. Adapted from Kirbie's Cravings.

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword activated charcoal, chocolate, cookies

Prep Time 20

Cook Time 14

Total Time 34

Servings 24 cookies

Author April

Ingredients

1 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup coconut oil
1 egg
2 cups self-rising flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp food-grade activated charcoal
2 tsp cinnamon powder
1 tbsp vanilla extract
½ cup white chocolate chips (optional: just use 1 cup white chocolate chips)
½ cup semisweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Mix the pumpkin, oil, egg, vanilla, and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer until creamy.
In a separate bowl, gently place the activated charcoal at the bottom of the bowl. Charcoal will puff up everywhere if you just throw it around and it leaves a fine black coating on EVERYTHING (trust me). Gently add the other dry ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, cinnamon.
Slowly add in the flour mixture while the mixer is off. Mix everything together on low speed til combined. Do not overmix.
Fold in the chocolate chips with a rubber spatula.
Line two (or three, possibly) baking sheets with Silpat or parchment paper. Use a spoon to drop cookies, spacing about an inch apart. These cookies don't spread much.
Bake for 14 minutes (if there's one cookie sheet on the top and one on the bottom rack, switch then at 7 minutes) and let rest on cooling racks.

Halloween decorations

Do you decorate for Halloween? We really don't, although I've been putting a pumpkin out on the porch so people know they can come trick or treat, and this year I got a strand of orange and purple lights from Target to make it more festive. Patrick loves handing out candy to the kids, so to facilitate getting rid of this cauldron full we have, I want lots of kids to come by and take it all. ALL OF IT.

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