Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies with Peppermint and White Chocolate Drizzle
This past Saturday, I took a few hours out of the craziness that is the holiday season working catering dinners and parties in the evening and helping out in a prep kitchen during the daytime to join fellow bakers at Cookie Swap NYC, put together by the wonderful Lillian Huang of Sweets by Sillianah. The proceeds from the event tickets went to City Harvest, so we were able to enjoy our sweets and to feed others as well. As in past years, bloggers and bakers gathered together to exchange season’s greetings and to sample each others’ culinary creations. I’ve brought Millionaire’s Shortbread and White Chocolate-Cranberry-Macadamia Nut Cookies to share. This year, I decided to take a crack at making a chocolate-peppermint combination.
Candy cane dust
I took a recipe that I’ve been fiddling around with for chocolate-chocolate chip cookies with white chocolate chunks and converted it to include a more seasonal flavor profile. The tricky part was that I wanted to get just enough peppermint infusion to come through without going overboard and having it become too overwhelming. A couple of months ago in the prep kitchen, the pastry chef was working on some holiday peppermint meringues. The aroma that permeated the kitchen as they were baking was almost suffocating. I think we were on the fence as to whether we felt like we were in a toothpaste commercial or drowning in essence of breathmint.
Sprinkling on candy cane dust
So, when I was mulling over how to avoid that same overly-aromatic fate for my Cookie Swap contribution, I asked the pastry chef what she thought. Her advice was to take the chocolate chunks, melt them down, add peppermint extract to them, re-harden the chocolate, and then break it up and add the peppermint-infused chocolate pieces to the cookie dough. I opted for the easy route and decided to add peppermint extract to the dough and to top it with crushed candy cane, hoping that I’d get enough of the mint flavor for the cookies to be festive but also keep the deep, rich chocolatey component. I think this recipe succeeds in doing just that, especially given the fact that when I dropped off the leftovers with the guys at the front desk in my building, they actually called me to tell me how much they liked them (which they had never done before).
Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies with Peppermint and White Chocolate Drizzle
Serving size: Makes 4 dozen 2- to 3-inch diameter cookies Prep time: about 1 1/2 hours, including baking and cooling time
Ingredients:
12 T Unsalted Butter, softened 1/4 c. Unrefined Cane Sugar 1/4 c. Light Brown Sugar 1/4 c. Dark Brown Sugar 1 large Egg 1/2 tsp. Vanilla Extract 1/2 tsp. Peppermint Extract 1 c. Flour 1/2 c. Droste Cocoa Powder 1/2 tsp. Salt 1/2 tsp. Baking Soda 1 c. Semi-sweet Chocolate pieces 1 c. White Chocolate pieces Crushed peppermint candy canes (about 2 whole candy canes’ worth)
Assembly:
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix butter and sugars together until they are completely combined. Add the egg and extracts and stir to incorporate. In a separate bowl, mix together the flour, cocoa powder, salt, and baking soda. Add the dry ingredients to the butter, egg, sugar mixture. Stir until there are no traces of the dry ingredients. Mix in the semi-sweet chocolate pieces.
Dough all mixed together
Bake the cookies for 5 minutes. Rotate the baking sheet and cook them for 5 minutes more. Remove the baking sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before placing them on a cooling rack. While the cookies are cooling, crush the candy canes by running them through a food processor until they become a fine red and white dust (see photo above).
White chocolate drizzled on cookies
Melt white chocolate pieces over a double boiler until smooth. Place the melted chocolate in a pastry bag or a resealable plastic bag and make a cut at the corner of the bag to create a small opening. Drizzle the chocolate in random patterns over the baked cookies. Sprinkle the crushed candy canes over the chocolate cookies. Allow the white chocolate to harden before serving them, if you can resist the temptation to bite into one right away!
Cookies finished with candy cane dust
Buon appetito!
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