The problem is worse now, an hour or so since I posted about it.
The brown "liquid" has gone from not able to be a "heaping" tablespoon, to now being solidified nearly rock solid!
Oh dear.

I've covered it with plastic and put it in the fridge, in hopes that someone will have come up with something helpful by the time I get home from work tomorrow.
Please, please, please.

I don't think your changes should have significantly harmed the recipe, so I don't know what you "did" if anything to make that dough difficult to handle.

What I would do is scoop out portions the size that you want and roll the dough into balls between your hands. You may have to warm the dough after it's been in the refrigerator although I think the warmth of your hands will be enough to help mold the dough into balls.

Flatten a little if you think it needs it, then bake. I often have stiff dough and bake it this way, it seems to make a nice chewy cookie, which is what I like.

Annie

I don't think 1/2 cup cocoa and 2 T oil equal 8 oz semi sweet chocolate. That's 8 oz by weight.....and I don't believe what you used equals that....
Also the cocoa butter in the chocolate is a lot more solid at room temp than oil is. Did you mix the oil and the cocoa with the butter?
The rules for subbing cocoa for bitter sweet chocolate are 3 Tablespoons cocoa and 1 Tablespoon butter are equal to one oz of baking chocolate....and for bitter sweet chocolate you need to add some sugar to the mix. Your cookies are short a lot of solid fat.....
In the future don't substitute without knowing just what you are doing. Did you melt the butter with the cocoa and oil?
I would try what Annie suggests, but it's likely that by this time the baking powder will have lost some of it's strength, so don't expect them to puff much....but with the chocolate chunks they should be edible.
Linda C

Just a quick note - working from 7.30 am until 4 pm - plus providing support for a DH who is one day post-knee surgery does not a lengthy blog reader make. (Nor a cook by the looks of last night's effort.)

Thank you both for your suggestions.

Linda, I didn't use the correct replacement for 8 oz of chocolate because that would be 24 tablespoons of cocoa. And I didn't use any butter at all in the recipe - the 2 Tbl. of oil was part of my substitution.

The good news is that the concoction is now less solid than it was last night. So Annie's "solution" may now be possible.

And from his bed of pain this evening, DH suggested that what I have made is fudge.
It's just a shame that neither one of us likes chocolate fudge. So I guess it's back to the drawing board for the lost and elusive chocolate cookie recipe.

Sorry Jane, but I'm with Linda C on this one. If you're going to substitute, you need to substitute the correct amount, not decide arbitrarily that it's too much. So you should have used the 24 tablespoons of cocoa, 8 tablespoons of butter and 8 tablespoons of sugar (this is in place of the 8oz of chocolate), AND the original 4 tablespoons of butter. By using only 2 tablespoons of oil your recipe is short 10 tablespoons of fat for a start.
I make lots of brownies using cocoa and butter substituted for baking chocolate (which is very very hard to come by here), and while it seems a huge amount of cocoa, it's worth it because they taste exactly as if I had used the chocolate.

The cookies turned out fine, except they have a bit of a bitter aftertaste, which I attributed to too much cocoa, despite the consensus here.
(Twenty-four tablespoons of cocoa would be a cup and a half!)

But I have just been given a recipe for chocolate cookies that ONLY requires omission of the filling. (I am better at leaving things out.)
It's from "Cadbury's Practical Recipes", and the lady says it is probably over 50 years old. It is from England so everything is in ounces - which she has offered to convert for me. (Thank heavens.)

Hungarian Chocolate Biscuits - without the filling
(Biscuits in England are cookies in North America.)
4 ozs. Margarine
2 ozs. Castor Sugar
1/2 tsp. Vanilla Essence
4 oz. Self Raising Flour
1 oz. Bournville Cocoa
Pinch of Salt

And that seems to be as short a list of ingredients as what I remember being in my missing cookie recipe.
I'll keep you posted if anyone is interested.

I don't know what kind of cocoa you used but unless it's Dutch process, it will have a bit of a bitter taste.....due to the alkalai used in the processing. You can't successfully substitite cocoa powder for semi sweet chocolate.....you are also forgetting that semi sweet chocolate contains some sugar....as well as the cocoa butter removed to make the powder.

Here's a recipe using just cocoa powder......it's simple enough, but not outrageously chocolate as Martha Stewart's. But if you try to sub milk for the yogurt or oil for the butter, they won't turn out.....they need the acid of the yogurt, brown sugar and the cocoa to make them light.
COCOA FUDGE COOKIES

1 cup flour
¼ tsp baking soda
1/8 tsp salt
5 Tbsp butter
7 Tbsp unsweetened cocoa
2/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup plain low-fat yogurt
1 tsp vanilla extract
Cooking spray

1. Preheat oven to 350°
2. Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine
flour, soda and salt; set aside. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium
heat. Remove from heat; stir in cocoa powder and sugars (mixture will
resemble coarse sand). Add yogurt and vanilla, stirring to combine Add
flour mixture, stirring until moist. Drop by level tablespoons 2 inches
apart onto baking sheets coated with cooking spray.
3. Bake at 350° for 8-10 minutes or until almost set. Cool on pans 2-3
minutes or until firm. Remove cookies from pans; cool on wire racks.

Yield: 2 dozen cookies.