Saturday, December 12, 2009

Double Chocolate Festive Cookies




It's been a week of sweets and cookies: baklava, some 70 + Christmas- shaped sugar cookies with buttercream frosting, and then these double chocolate peppermint gems and so, as you can imagine, I've had my fill on both cookie dough and cavity-inducing particles. Hard to believe that gnawing on some celery actually sounds appealing. Or raw celery root. Something...

Like so many of our wonderful Grandmothers, my maternal one had some pretty killer cookie recipes and this happens to be one of my favorites- it only shows itself around the Xmas season but take out the peppermint flavor, and you've got a winner morsel of goodness for the year round. I myself personally reserve this recipe for Decembers.

My own mom has always added the mint-flavored, red and green-colored M &M's to this dough which is my first preference. However, my local Target was out of them (!) and improvisation called for some candy canes I had laying around: just smashed the daylights out of them with some fist-work and then neatly folded them into this succulent dough.

At any rate, they were good good good.

I hope next week I can tackle the famous, most-beloved holiday bread in all of German world:

STOLLEN!

Happy weekend, all!


Double Chocolate Cookies with Peppermint Pieces

1 cup butter (2 squares), at room temperature
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2/3 cup cocoa
1/4 tsp salt
1 1/2- 1 3/4 cup flour
3/4 tsp baking soda
1 cup chocolate chips
1 cup mint-flavored M &M's or peppermint pieces


Cream the butter, sugar, and eggs together until smooth. Add vanilla. In a seperate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and then slowly incorporate to butter mixture. Fold in chocolate chips and mint pieces. Drop by large spoonfuls on a greased baking sheet.
Bake at 350 for about 9 minutes (or longer if at high altitude).


2 comments:

Emily said...

Kate I can't wait to see how your stollen turns out! Remember when the . . . . gave us one on the mish and you picked the raisins and candies fruit out of it to eat and walked down the street chucking the "bread" pieces in the bushes? . . . . Good times!

AshEnds said...

I tried these and they were amazing... I added more flour though. LOVE IT