Ingredients:
2 2/3 cups flour
1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 cups sugar
2 eggs, at room temperature
1/4-1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract (not mint extract)
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 cup bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups creme de menthe baking bits (I used these Andes chips)*
3-4 drops green food coloring
pinch salt
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 350. Line 387 cookie sheets with silicone baking mats or parchment. In a medium-sized bowl, whisk together the dry ingredients. In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in the extract. Taste and add additional extract to taste as needed. Add the eggs and food coloring and combine thoroughly. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture and mix until a very thick dough forms. Add additional food dye if needed. Fold in the chips. Form cookies by dropping 1 heaping teaspoon of dough two inches apart.
Flatten slightly then bake until light brown, about 14 minutes. Slide them out on the baking mat on to a cooling rack and allow them to cool 1-2 minutes on the baking mat/parchment on the wire rack before removing them to cool directly on the wire rack.
Yield: about 2 1/2-3 dozen cookies
* I bet you could just finely chop some Andes mints and they’d work fine but I haven’t tried this myself. Let me know if you do and how it turns out!
My thoughts:
I saw a recipe for mint chocolate chip cookies on the Betty Crocker website that looked like fun but they called for a sugar cookie mix. Cookies are so easy and use such basic ingredients, I thought I’d make it myself from scratch.
Dying the cookies a minty green is of course totally unnecessary but it’s the holidays and it calls to mind a big scoop of chocolate mint ice cream so why not? It also makes them stand out on a cookie tray so they don’t get mistaken for a plain chocolate chip cookie.
As these cookies have both peppermint extract and creme de menthe bits, these are definitely cookies for the mint lover. The dark chocolate chips temper it a bit and give the cookies a bigger depth of flavor.
