Holiday Recipe Contest: Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies

These cookies are just as sweet as the story attached to them. They take about 30 minutes of kitchen work and about one hour to prepare total. When our staff taste tested these cookies, we loved the contrast of textures between the cookie, marshmallow, frosting and nut — and we wished we kept a gallon of milk in the breakroom fridge to wash it down!

From Memory

This cookie recipe was given to my mother, LaRae Harris Wilson, by a dear friend of hers in college during the late 1970s at BYU. My mother’s friend was named Kris Parks, and she was the Relief Society president of their BYU ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My mother was one of her counselors. Right before school began in the fall of 1978, Kris and my mom made a plate of these cookies for each of the apartments in their ward in the old Heritage Halls. They decorated each apartment’s kitchen with a homemade gingham tablecloth, a plate of these cookies, the recipe for these cookies and a special welcome note. My mom said Kris had the amazing gift of loving others by serving them.

My mother’s friendship with Kris continued after they were both married. My mom moved to Seattle, Washington, and started a family, and Kris moved to Texas. Then my mom stopped hearing from Kris. After many years and much research, she learned Kris had died suddenly of an aneurysm at 27 years old, leaving behind a husband and three small children.

We had always been making these cookies at the holidays, and once we learned of Kris’s passing, we make them as a remembrance of someone who truly knew how to love and serve as Jesus did. My mom still has the handwritten recipe card from Kris from 1978.

— Brynna Haddock

Chocolate Marshmallow Cookies

• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup shortening
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
• 16 large marshmallows, cut in half “hamburger bun” style
• 1/2 cup pecan halves

Directions

Sift together flour, baking soda, salt and cocoa powder in a large bowl. Cream shortening and sugar together for two minutes in another bowl. Add eggs, vanilla and milk to shortening and sugar mixture, and beat well. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and mix just until combined and uniform.

Drop well-rounded spoonfuls onto a greased baking sheet. Bake at 350ºF for seven to eight minutes. Remove pan from oven and gently press one marshmallow half onto the top of each cookie. Return pan to oven and bake two minutes more. Do not over bake.

Cool cookies on baking sheet three to five minutes, then transfer to cooling racks and cool completely. Frost cooled cookies with the still-warm Fast Fudge Frosting (recipe below), then top each cookie with a pecan half.

Fast Fudge Frosting

• 1 pound powdered sugar
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/3 cup boiling water
• 1/2 cup softened butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring

Directions

Combine powdered sugar, cocoa powder and salt. Add boiling water and butter, and beat to spreading consistency. Add vanilla. While frosting is still warm, spread over cooled chocolate marshmallow cookies, and then top each cookie with a pecan half.