Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat room temperature butter in stand mixer/by hand for 3-5 minutes (or until butter turns off-white).

Add in brown sugar and white sugar. Beat the sugar with the butter until the mixture is fluffy (about 2 minutes).

Add your large egg and stir into mixture

Mix in vanilla and molasses.

Add flour, baking soda, cream of tartar, cocoa powder, espresso powder, and salt to form your dough. If using a stand mixer, mix on low. If mixing by hand, use a spatula.

Use a 1/3 cup scoop (or however much your heart desires) and place a single ball of dough on baking tray. THIS IS YOUR TEST COOKIE! Always start with baking a single cookie, to make sure you didn’t forget an ingredient and/or your oven isn’t too hot (some ovens have hot-spots or cook things quicker/slower than others). This is also a good indicator of how much your cookie will spread.

After baking your test cookie, place cookie dough balls on your tray. Use your test cookie to estimate how many cookies you can fit on your tray.

If your cookie did not spread much, flatten the dough a little before putting in oven. (I flattened mine)

Bake cookies for 10-11 minutes (for 1/3 cup scoop).

For perfectly circular cookies, use a circular bowl/cup and swirl around your fresh cookie to make edges clean. Then let cookies sit on tray for about 10 minutes before removing.

To make frosting, beat shortening and butter until fluffy (2-3 minutes) and then mix in chocolate syrup (if you don’t have any, it’s pretty easy to make at home!) Lastly add your powdered sugar and cocoa powder. If frosting is too thick, add 3-5 tbsp of heavy cream.

Remember to beat your frosting with a whisk after adding heavy cream/milk so it becomes fluffy and stable! This is very important, or you will have runny frosting.

Put frosting in a ziploc/piping bag or frost with a utensil.

Frost cookies once they’re cool and add chocolate chunks on top!

Put in fridge to store up to 10 days or leave at room temperature for up to a week!