12 Days of Cookies Day 5: Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

I plan all of my Christmas baking fairly far in advance, but I know that inevitably there will be one or two changes that happen right in the moment. This is one recipe that I hadn’t initially planned to bake. I came across it and it looked great. I noticed that it called for ½ cup of Andes Peppermint Crunch chips and I knew I had a half package in the cupboard so I decided to give them a try. Chocolate and peppermint is such a Christmas classic!

This cookie is basically a chocolate chocolate chip cookie with the peppermint baking chips. My husband always wants me to bake chocolate chip cookies so I hoped this would be something that he would like. When I looked at the original recipe, I noticed that sugar was included in the directions but it didn’t list how much sugar to use in the ingredient list. I looked at a few other recipes on the site and it looked like 1 cup sugar was the right amount so that’s what I used.

For a holiday cookie that you need to put together quickly, this is the one for you. You do have to chill the dough but just for a couple of minutes so it isn’t too bad. If you’re not familiar with the Peppermint Crunch chips, they are a white chocolate with peppermint candy combination and they’re not too hard to find in the store this time of year. These look and taste great, although mine are a touch dry. Maybe I baked them a little too long? It doesn’t matter, just pair them with some hot chocolate and you are in for a holiday treat.

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

1-1/2 cups flour

¼ cup cocoa powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 teaspoons cornstarch

½ cup butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup Andes Peppermint Crunch Baking Chips

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking soda, and cornstarch; set aside. In a large mixer bowl, combine the butter and sugar. Beat on medium until light. Add the egg and vanilla and stir to combine. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture, stirring until the dough comes together. By hand stir in the chocolate chips and Peppermint crunch baking chips. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

Drop the dough onto the prepared baking sheet, using about ½ tablespoon per cookie. Bake for 9-10 minutes, until set. Cookies may look a little under baked, but they will be fine once cooled. Allow to cool on the baking sheets for several minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Recipe from Gal on a Mission

12 Days of Cookies Day 4: Cranberry Orange Pecan Tartlets

When I look for recipes, I get most of them online. We’ve moved most of our cookbooks downstairs, so they aren’t quite as close at hand as they used to be. Occasionally I grab a book to look at and take it upstairs. I found a Christmas cookie magazine that was published by Sunset probably 10 or so years ago. I looked through it and hoped I would find a different cookie to make. I came across these and immediately added them to my Christmas cookie list.

I love this type of cookies, baked in a mini muffin cup. I call them tassies, as the first cookie I made like these were Pecan Tassies. The original recipe used store bought sugar cookie dough for the shell, but I made a simple cream cheese pastry, which I have used before for other tassies. The dough is sticky but not too hard to work with. I recently bought a tart tamper and that made it even easier to press the dough into the pan. Just use floured fingers if you don’t have a tart tamper.

I really like the flavors in these tartlets. The crust has a little bit of tang because of the cream cheese and the filling is quite tart. If tartness is not a flavor you like, these cookies are probably not for you. They don’t have any added sugar, just what is in the marmalade, so they aren’t very sweet. Sometimes that’s a relief after all the super sweet treats that are around during the holidays.

Cranberry Orange Pecan Tartlets

4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

½ cup butter, room temperature

1 cup flour

¼ teaspoon salt

¾ cup chopped dried cranberries

2/3 cup finely chopped pecans

1/3 cup orange marmalade

1 teaspoon vanilla

Make the dough: in a large mixer bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth. With the mixer running on low, gradually blend in the flour and salt. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Have two 12-cup mini muffin pans ready.

In a medium bowl, stir together the cranberries, pecans, marmalade, and vanilla. Remove the dough from the refrigerator. Divide the dough into 4 pieces and then divide each piece into 6 small pieces of dough. Place one piece of dough in each of the mini muffin cups. Press the dough into the bottom and ¾ of the way up the sides of the cup with floured hands. Fill each cup with about ½ tablespoon of filling. 

Bake for 20-22 minutes, until the edges of the tartlets are light brown. Allow to cool for 20 minutes in the pan. Carefully remove the tartlets from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack.

Inspiration and filling recipe from Sunset Magazine, Dough recipe from Simply Sifted

12 Days of Cookies Day 3: Cinnamon Spice Bars with Gingersnap Streusel

I saw this bar cookie and I thought it just sounded so full of the flavors of the season. Bar cookie with spices and cinnamon chips topped with spiced cream cheese frosting and a gingersnap cookie streusel. Such great flavors all packed into one cookie. The original recipe used some shortcuts, some of which I followed and some that I went ahead and made my own components from scratch.

The base of this cookie is a cake mix, and sometimes it is really convenient to use a cake mix as your starting point. I have a couple of Pillsbury Bake-off recipes that use a cake mix as the foundation and they are great. I used real rum instead of rum extract, but you could use the extract if you wanted to avoid alcohol. (1 tablespoon rum=1 teaspoon extract). I made the frosting from scratch instead of using a premade tub of frosting. I think cream cheese frosting is pretty easy to make and it tastes a lot better! That being said, I meant to use equal amounts of cream cheese and butter, but I used half as much butter. I still had way more frosting than needed. I also had too much streusel.

This dough is super sticky so I didn’t even try to spread it in the pan with a spatula. I just lightly floured my hands and that worked the best. They bake up quickly and cool fairly fast, so you don’t have to wait too long to get the bars fully assembled. Since the base is cakey, they cut fairly easily, too. I hate it when I have to struggle to cut the bars. These cookies are fairly sweet, but I love the combination of the cinnamon and gingersnap streusel.

Cinnamon Spice Bars with Gingersnap Streusel

1 box white cake mix

2 eggs

½ cup oil

2 tablespoons rum

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon nutmeg

1 cup cinnamon chips

   

8 ounces cream cheese, room temperature

½ cup butter, room temperature

2-1/2 cups powdered sugar

1 tablespoon rum

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 cup crushed gingersnap cookies

½ teaspoon cinnamon

2 tablespoons brown sugar

2 tablespoons flour

3 tablespoons butter, melted

Make the bars: preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9” x 13” baking pan with cooking spray.

In a large mixer bowl, combine the cake mix, eggs, oil, run, cinnamon and nutmeg. Beat on medium until smooth. Stir in the cinnamon chips. With lightly floured hands, press the dough evenly into the prepared pan.

Bake for 15-17 minutes, until lightly browned. Allow to cool on a wire rack before frosting.

Make the frosting: in a large mixer bowl, beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Gradually add the powdered sugar while the mixer is running on low. Add the rum and cinnamon and then beat on medium-high until fluffy, about 5 minutes. Spread a layer of frosting on top of the bars. (I did not use all of the frosting.)

Make the streusel: in a medium bowl, whisk to combine the gingersnaps, cinnamon, brown sugar, and flour. Add the melted butter and stir to combine. Sprinkle the streusel evenly over the frosted bars. Chill before cutting into bars.

Recipe from The Domestic Rebel

12 Days of Cookies Day 2: Eggnog Cookies

I couldn’t possibly do some Christmas baking without baking with eggnog. I really like eggnog, although I know that it’s really not good to drink too much of it. I come across a lot of “eggnog” recipes this time of year and many times the recipes don’t even include eggnog! Sure you can combine nutmeg and rum flavors, but they never come across as clearly as just using eggnog.

This recipe uses eggnog in the dough and in the glaze. The cookie dough is made as though it were cake batter: beat the butter, sugar and eggs, and then add the flour alternating with the eggnog. The dough does look like a fluffy cake batter, very similar to the batter for madeleines. I knew these would be a cakey cookie and they certainly are. The dough is pretty forgiving, too, as the random scoops of dough came out as perfectly round little cakes. Beautiful!

I made half a batch and made 2 dozen medium sized cookies. If you were serving these cookies as part of a cookie tray, I would make them a little smaller, maybe using one tablespoon of dough per cookie. The texture of these cookies is just fantastic. They are perfect little cakes. They are not overly sweet, but the eggnog glaze adds that touch of sweet that is very nice. I think they have a great eggnog flavor: not too strong but the eggnog is clearly there.

Eggnog Cookies

3 cups flour

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon nutmeg

¾ cup butter, room temperature

1-1/2 cups sugar

2 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla

2/3 cup eggnog

3-4 tablespoons eggnog

1-1/2 cups powdered sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a medium bowl, combine the flour, baking soda, salt, and nutmeg; set aside. In a large mixer bowl cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs and stir until combined. Stir in the vanilla.

With the mixer running on low, add the flour mixture alternatively with the eggnog, beginning and ending with the flour mixture. Stir until the flour is incorporated.

Using a 2 tablespoon scoop, scoop the cookie dough onto the prepared baking sheets. Refrigerate for 15 minutes before baking.

Bake for 15 minutes, until the edges of the cookies just begin to brown. Cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack.

Make the glaze: in a small bowl whisk together the eggnog and powdered sugar. Spoon the glaze on the cookies or dip the tops of the cookies in the glaze.

Recipe from Savory Simple

12 Days of Cookies Day 1: Boozy Chocolate Mint Cookies

Welcome again to my collection of Christmas cookies. Between now and December 25^th, I will post 12 different Christmas cookie recipes. I hope that you’ll be inspired to try something new this Christmas to pair with the classics you love. I always have a great time choosing which cookies to make and this year was no exception. I’ll start this year with a cookie for the adults: boozy chocolate mint cookies. 

The cookbook where I got this recipe describes them as an adult Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie, but the texture isn’t quite right for that. It doesn’t matter, as these are very good on their own accord. The cookie is simple, just a flat chocolate cookie. The interest for these cookies comes in the glaze, which combines Irish cream liqueur, Kahlua, and crème de menthe. I didn’t have crème de menthe but my parents did, so I borrowed some from them. That’s what gives these cookies their mint-ness.

My cookies didn’t turn out at all like the photo in the cookbook. They topped theirs with a Junior Mint and I tried that with mine and it just looked silly. I liked how mine turned out anyway! The glaze is kind of an ugly brown/green color, so I added some food coloring to brighten it up and make the glaze look better. These nice chewy cookies also keep fairly well, so they are a good option if you’re trying to bake ahead of the holidays. Enjoy!

Boozy Chocolate Mint Cookies

8 ounces butter, room temperature

1 cup sugar

½ cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

½ teaspoon vanilla

2 teaspoons instant espresso powder

2 cups flour

2/3 cup cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1-1/4 to 1-3/4 cups powdered sugar

2 tablespoons Irish cream liqueur

1 tablespoon Kahlua

1 tablespoon crème de menthe

Green food color, if desired

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two baking sheets with silicone baking mats.

In a large mixer bowl, beat the butter, sugar and brown sugar until light. Add the eggs, vanilla and espresso powder and stir to combine. In a separate bowl whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt. With the mixer running on low, gradually add the flour mixture, stirring until the flour is incorporated.

Scoop tablespoons of dough on the prepared baking sheets. Bake until the cookies have flattened, about 12-15 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes on the baking sheets and then remove to a wire rack.

Make the glaze: mix 1-1/4 cups powdered sugar with the Irish cream, Kahlua, and crème de menthe. Whisk until smooth. If desired, add food coloring to the glaze. If the glaze is too thin, add additional powdered sugar. Drizzle over the cooled cookies and allow to set before serving.

Recipe from The Boozy Baker by Lucy Baker