Chocolate and Peppermint Cookies

Who doesn't like chocolate and peppermint together. I'm pretty sure the girl scouts would agree with that! After recently enjoying some Back to Nature Fudge Mint Cookies, I began to wonder why I've never tried to make a chocolate and peppermint cookies before. There are certainly tons and tons of chocolate and mint cookie recipes out there, many of them trying to duplicate the famous girl scout version, however most of those recipes included ingredients I avoid in the kitchen. So I set off to make my own version. The first one was okay, I used coconut flour and while the cookie didn't taste bad, I wasn't a fan of the end texture. Too dense. Anyways, I decided to forget the coconut flour and try whole wheat flour. I've actually not been using whole wheat flour in our kitchen for several months now, hence the lack of posts with that ingredient. We took our son off of wheat because he seemed to not tolerate it well, however lately we have allowed him to have some and he isn't reacting the same as he was, so I'm going to start using it more again. Hurray, at least in my book! :-)


Back to the cookies. Round 2, I used honey for the sweetener, whole wheat for the flour and no baking powder or soda. These turned out very good, but I was curious to see what would happen if I used the baking powder and soda. I also tried using rapadura sugar instead of honey, this was primarily because I ran out of honey and wasn't going to be able to get more until this weekend. My son and I set off to make cookies again this morning, using the rapadura sugar, baking soda and powder and these turned out great or as my son said, "Mom these are gooooood." With these cookies I tried chilling the dough and slicing it as well as rolling it in balls and flattening the balls with a glass. Both ways worked, but I think I'd stick to rolling the dough in balls in the future because I didn't have to wait for the dough to chill.

I'm going to include the recipe for the honey version and the rapadura sugar version. The basic difference is the honey version is a bit softer, denser, more cake like, because of the moisture the honey adds and the cookies a tad less sweet. The sugar version makes a crunchier cookie. If you don't use rapadura or are unable to get it, no worries, you can use white sugar instead. Rapadura is a less processed form of the sugar we are used to. It's made from dehydrated cane juice. The molasses has not been removed, so this sugar contains more nutrients, vitamins and minerals then the standard stuff. I'd highly recommend trying rapadura if you haven't before. That's just my two cents! :-)

Okay on to the recipe...
 

Getting Started: Makes approx. 18-24 cookies
For the rapadura version
1 stick of organic butter at room temperature
3/4 cup rapadura sugar or white sugar
1 organic egg
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract
1 1/4 cup organic whole wheat flour - I used freshly ground white whole wheat
1/2 cup organic cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking powder - aluminum free
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 1/2 cups organic, dark chocolate chips

For the honey version

1 stick of organic butter at room temperature

1/3 cup + 1/4 cup raw honey
1 organic egg
1/2 tsp. pure vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract

1 3/4 cup organic whole wheat flour - I used freshly ground white whole wheat

1/2 cup + 1 tbsp. organic cocoa powder
1 tsp. baking powder - optional
1/2 tsp. baking soda - optional
1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 1/2 cups organic, dark chocolate chips

Getting Started: Pre-heat oven to 350º
1. In a large bowl cream together the butter and honey, then add, mixing well, your egg, vanilla extract and peppermint extract.

2. In a a smaller bowl, mix the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Then sift the dry ingredients over the butter mixture.

3. Stir all of the ingredients together until you have a thick cookie dough. Measure out tablespoon amounts of dough and roll into balls. Place balls about 3" apart on a greased or parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

4. Using a glass with a flat bottom, flatten the balls of dough to 1/8" thick. I found this easiest to do by lightly greasing the bottom of the glass, then dipping the glass into cocoa powder and flattening the balls of dough. Ever two cookies or so, dip the glass back into the cocoa powder.

5. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes and then allow cookies to cool on the counter or a cooling rack.

6. While the cookies are cooling, melt your chocolate chips in a double boiler or in a bowl placed over bowling water. Stir continuously until chocolate is melted.

7. Remove chocolate from heat and "ice" the cooled cookies with it. Allow chocolate to cool completely until it hardens again. You can speed up this process by placing the cookies into the freezer for 5-10 minutes.

Sit back and enjoy! For me that means I'm making some homemade peppermint, chocolate chunk ice cream (click HERE for my recipe) this afternoon to go along with my cookies. Oh so very, very good! :-D