Soft Andes Mint Chip Cookies

Do you remember the days when you would get an Andes mint with your check after eating a meal in a restaurant? I loved getting those little Andes mints, trying to savor as much as I could, even though it was this little tiny rectangle of goodness.

When I saw these Andes mint cookies on Foodgawker I knew I needed to make them at some point. The only thing was I couldn’t find Andes mint chips anywhere! I knew I could probably just buy regular Andes mints and just chop them up, but I’m too lazy for that. Then one day I was at Target and I found them! I quickly grabbed a bag in preparation for making them.

The Andes mint chips were kind of forgotten for a while. I always saw them, but never really thought about them. Until sometime in January when I was having stress problems from school and I needed to do something that didn’t require complicated math.

These cookies are not gooey, but rather soft and fluffy. I know it’s kind of weird to describe a cookie as fluffy, but that’s what the inside of the baked cookies looked light.

The mint is very prominent in these cookies, so if you are an Andes mint fan, bake these right away.

Soft Andes Mint Chip Cookies

Slightly adapted from Sally’s Baking Addiction

Makes about 3 ½ dozen

Ingredients

2 ¼ cups (270 g) unbleached all-purpose flour

¾ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

2 tsp. unsweetened natural cocoa powder

1 stick unsalted butter, soft

¾ cup (144 g) dark brown sugar

½ cup (96 g) sugar

1 egg + 1 egg yolk, room temperature

1 tsp. pure vanilla extract

 1/3 cup Andes Mint Chips

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper; set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cocoa powder. Make sure to break up the clumps of cocoa.

In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars together on medium high speed until light and fluffy. Add the whole egg and egg yolk, mixing well after each addition. Beat in the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.

Turn the mixer speed down to low and add 1/3 of the flour mixture. Turn the mixer on medium and beat for 30 seconds. Repeat with half the flour mixture and again with the remaining flour mixture. The dough should be quite thick. Fold the Andes mint chips with a rubber spatula.

Drop tablespoon size pieces of dough onto the cookie sheet, keeping each piece about 2 inches apart. I used a medium-small cookie scoop for this. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until slightly brown around the edges. Cool the cookies on the tray for 2-3 minutes before removing to a cooling rack or into your mouth. 

Peppermint Kisses

Wow, I can't believe it's already 2012! And I can't believe I'll be turning 18 in just two days! Time really does fly. I know I haven't posted anything since Christmas Eve, but I have a good excuse, honest. You see... I ended up going to my Grandma's house in South Carolina from the 27th to the 31st and then the famly and I went up to New York City for New Years (no I didn't get into Times Square...only the crazies who don't eat or have bladders do that), but I'm back now and I'm posting about cookies that I made in mid December. I know you all have left-over candy canes, so this is a great ways to use those up.

I had an absolute blast making this dough. I don't know why, but I don't think I have ever been so excited over a cookie. Maybe it was the spirit of the holiday season that was filling my brain, but I don't care.

When making this dough I was so giddy because as soon as I added the crushed candy canes to the dough, it all turned pink! I was so excited over this I made everyone in my family look at the rosey pink dough. I think my mom did the best job at being enthusiastic for me. My sister just kinda gave me the "I'm judging you" face.

These cookies were definitely a hit, especially with my mom. She kept nibbling on them all day and the next day. But be careful when baking, because the cookies will still look super puffy and uncooked, but that's when you need to take them out, like ASAP, because they will settle down and crinkle up on the top.

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and an awesome New Year. I've already come up with a very long list of what I need to make by the end of this year.

Peppermint Kisses

adapted from Sing for Your Supper
makes 3 1/2 dozen cookies

Ingredients
2 cups unbleached all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
12 mini candy canes (or about 3 large ones?)
1 stick unsalted butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper, set aside.
2. In a food processor (or by hand) crush the candy canes to a fine powder. It's ok
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add in the egg and egg yolk and mix on medium for about a minute or until the eggs have fully been incorporated. Beat in the vanilla. Reduce the speed to low and slowly add in the flour mixture. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Beat until all of the flour mixture has been incorporated.
4. Using a portion scoop, drop the cookies on the lined baking try, spacing them about an inch and a half apart. Bake for about 6 minutes, no more than 8. The cookies will look very underdone, but don't pay any attention to that, take those cookies out of the oven! Let the cookies cool on the baking sheet for about a minute before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Minty Evergreens

Happy Christmas (Eve)! I can’t believe the month of December has gone by so quickly. I would appreciate it if December was about three weeks longer, that way I could get all of my holiday baking done, but alas it is not and I will have to make the unbaked treats next year…or make them anytime I wish and pretend it is Christmas (shhh).So today’s post is full of random stuff I want to tell you, so here it goes.

1.       We got snow on Thursday. Well, we got more than snow; we got bombarded with powdery and fluffy cold stuff. It was a foot and a half deep. There’s still about a foot outside. Because of the snow, I decided to bake, because nothing says baking weather like being trapped inside your house. (I wasn’t trapped; I still had to go to work).

2.       I found this new thing in the grocery store yesterday. Well I didn’t just come across it, I’ve seen it many a time before, but I just never bought it. Yesterday I did buy it for a special occasion. Wanna know what it is? It’s Pam for bakers. Yup, bakers get their own special Pam, just like the grillers. This special Pam has flour in the mix, and I love it. It’s special because of the magical flour and the fact that it has a smell. Yup, you read correctly, it has a smell. It smells like freshly opened vanilla cake mix. It’s delicious and I went a little overboard when spraying it because I loved the smell so much. I even sniffed the pan when I was done. Is that bad?

3.       I got a new cake pan; it's a Bundt, my first ever. It's also very festive; it's in the shape of Christmas trees. I love it.

4.       I made a cake yesterday. A fabulous, fudgy, festive cake. I made it in my new Bundt pan. Did I mention it’s shaped like Christmas trees? It's very exciting!

So enough randomness, let’s talk fudgy cake, shall we? So When I opened the box containing my festive new pan, there was a recipe for Mint Mountains on the paper wrapped around the pan. The recipe came from Nordic Ware’s 2007 Christmas contest, and I figured why not try it? This way I could test out my new pan.

The cake batter was the most amazing cake batter of all time. It was so fluffy and the smell reminded me of vanilla cake mix. So if I didn’t get my cake mix fix from the Pam, then I certainly got it from this cake. You see, the cake has a vanilla layer and a chocolate layer. The vanilla layer goes into the peaks of the trees, creating a snowy appearance and the chocolate layer goes on the bottom, so I guess it’s supposed to resemble the mountains, but this is a tree Bundt pan, and so the chocolate will resemble the tree bark.

I made a few adaptations from the original recipe, like changing the white chocolate pudding mix to vanilla pudding mix. The recipe calls for the pudding mixes to be 3.9 oz boxes. This is fine for the vanilla batter, but I would use a smaller box for the chocolate fudge batter. The sour cream that was called for was replaced by plain yogurt, and I also omitted the chocolate chips. I don’t think this cake needs them at all, they would be lost in the fudgy interior and then you couldn’t enjoy them. Actually, this cake is so fudgy; I had trouble telling when it was done.  The 50 minute mark went by, as did the 60 minute mark. I ended up taking the cake out of the oven around the 63 minute mark because I didn’t want to outer side of the cake to over bake. Despite that little flaw, this cake is awesome, and I’m glad I got to test out my new Bundt pan and some Pam for bakers. Man, why am I so obsessed with the most random things? Oh well.

Merry Christmas! and Happy Holidays!

Minty Evergreens

Adapted from 207 Nordic Ware Christmas Contest

Ingredients
1 ½ sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 ¼ cups sugar
2 eggs + 1 egg white, seperated; room temperature
1 package (3.9 oz) instant vanilla pudding mix
1 tsp peppermint extract
1 container (6 oz) plain yogurt
2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
¾ tsp salt
2 ½ tsp baking powder
1 cup milk, divided
1/3 cup natural cocoa powder
1 package (3.9 oz) instant chocolate fudge pudding mix

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter or spray Bundt pan and coat in flour and shake out the excess; set aside. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set that aside as well.
2. In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar on medium speed until the mixture becomes nice and fluffy. Scrape down the sides of the bowl. Add in the egg whites and beat for about two minutes or until mixture becomes fluffy. Beat in the vanilla pudding mix, peppermint extract, and yogurt. Slow the speed down to medium-slow and add in about half of the flour mixture. Mix for 30 seconds and then slowly pour ¾ cup of the milk. Mix for another 30 seconds and then add in the rest of the flour mixture. Make sure to scrape the bowl down after each addition. Increase the speed back to medium and beat until all of the flour has been fully incorporated. Spoon about two cups worth of batter into the prepared cake tin. If you are using the Holiday Tree pan, make sure the batter fills the very tips of the trees.
3. Going back to the mixture in the bowl; beat in the egg yolks, cocoa powder, chocolate fudge pudding mix, and remaining ¼ cup of milk. Beat on medium until everything in incorporated. The batter will be very thick. Spoon the chocolate batter over the top of the vanilla batter. Gently tap the pan on the counter to release any air bubbles.
4. Place the pan on a baking tray. Place the tray in the center of the preheated oven and bake for 50-60 minutes or until a skewer is inserted in the cake and comes out relatively clean. Once baked, take cake out of the oven and let it cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes. Shake the pan from side to side to loosen and invert the cake onto a cooling rack.
5. When the cake is completely cooled, transfer onto a serving platter and finish it off with a dusting of powdered sugar.    

Holiday Baking: Peppermint Meringue

First, I would like to say that I have never made meringue before, but something in my wanted to try it out; to see if I could do it. The answer? Kind of, sort of. Maybe I didn’t wait for the egg whites to get as stiff as they could be (I thought they were pretty stiff when I started) or maybe it was because I added the vanilla and peppermint extracts while I was folding in the sugar mixture that made the egg whites deflate a little (probably the later). Or maybe, the eggs whites are supposed to be a little runny when you put them into the piping bag or maybe it was the kind of bag that I used. Either way, the eggs white deflated a little, but I don’t care because they taste pretty darn good to me and I congratulate myself on trying something new! :)

By the way I first saw these on  Shauna's Piece of Cake blog, if you want to see what they are supposed to turn out like, go see her blog :).

This is probably where I messed up

 Looks so shiny, I sent so unbelieveable slow, but maybe I

was just too agressive.

 I do wish I could taste the peppermint flavoring more,

though.

 Chocolate dipped!

Chocolate-Dipped Peppermint Meringues

I have no clue how many it made. I was just making

random dots until the batter turned to goop

Ingredients

4 large egg whites, at room temperature

1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar

Pinch of salt
3/4 cup superfine sugar
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
Red gel food coloring
8 ounces bittersweet chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet because that's all I had)

Directions

1. Position the oven rack to the upper and lower thirds of the oven and preheat it to 250 degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.
2. Sift together 2 tablespoons of the superfine sugar, the confectioners' sugar, and the flour into a medium bowl. Set aside.
3. In the bowl of an electric mixer fitter with the whip attachment, combine the egg whites, cream of tartar and salt. Whip first on medium speed, gradually increasing the speed to high, until the egg whites reach soft peaks. Gradually rain in the remaining superfine sugar. Continue to whip until the meringue is glossy and holds a very stiff peak. Beat in the vanilla and peppermint extracts.
4. Remove the bowl from the mixer. With a large spatula, gently and carefully fold in the remaining sugar mixture by hand in three additions, taking care not to deflate the egg whites.
5. On the inside of a piping bag fitted with a large star tip, use a long, thin paint brush to paint four or five long stripes of food coloring up the sides of the bag. Carefully transfer the meringue to the piping bag, aiming for the center of the bag as much as possible to avoid smudging the stripes. Pipe out the meringue into cookies about 1 1/2 inches in diameter onto the prepared baking sheets.
6. Place both sheets into the oven at once, and immediately turn the oven temperature down to 200 degrees. Bake until the cookies are completely firm and dry, about 1 hour and 45 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to cool completely.
7. Melt the chocolate chips on a double boiler or in the microwave on high power in 30 second intervals until smooth, stirring after each interval. Dip the bottoms of the cookies in the melted chocolate and place them on parchment-lined baking sheets. when the chocolate has cooled and set (the refrigerator can speed up this process considerably), remove the cookies from the sheets and store in airtight containers at cool room temperature for up to 2 weeks.