Holiday Cookie Time!

Like I said, after see­ing how cute the pep­per­mint kisses were I just had to make a choco­late cookie to put them on.  I had some red dec­o­ra­tor sugar in the pantry and rolled just the tops of the cookie balls into that before bak­ing for some extra hol­i­day sparkle.

Choco­late Pep­per­mint Kiss Cook­ies

Ingre­di­ents: 2 cups all-purpose flour 1/2 cup unsweet­ened cocoa 1 tea­spoon bak­ing powder 1/4 tea­spoon salt 8 ounces unsalted but­ter (2 sticks), softened 1 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed 2/3 cup gran­u­lated sugar 2 large eggs 1 tea­spoon vanilla extract 1 choco­late kiss for each cookie

Method:

1.  Sift together the flour, cocoa, bak­ing pow­der, and salt and place aside.

2.  Cream together the but­ter and sug­ars until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, beat­ing after each addi­tion. Beat in vanilla.

3.  On low speed, beat in flour mix­ture a lit­tle at a time, until well blended and smooth.

4.  Drop choco­late cookie dough onto greased bak­ing sheets or sil­i­cone mat by rounded tea­spoons, about 2 inches apart.   I rolled mine in coloured dec­o­ra­tor sugar[1] before plac­ing them on the tray.

5.  Bake at 350° for 12 to 15 min­utes, or until set.

Gen­tly push a kiss into each cookie as soon as they come out of the oven.

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

***TIP***  If you don’t have the coloured dec­o­ra­tor sugar[1] avail­able you can make your own but you will still need pow­dered food colour­ing to add to reg­u­lar white sugar.  Place 1 cup of white sugar into a con­tainer with a tight fit­ting lid and to that add about 1/4 tea­spoon of pow­dered food colour­ing.  Shake the con­tainer until the white sugar turns coloured.  Of course you can adjust the amount of food colour­ing to make stronger or paler colours.

Peanut But­ter Choco­late Kiss Cookie 

Ingre­di­ents:

1.   Pre­heat the oven to 375°F.
2.  Cream together but­ter, both sug­ars and peanut but­ter.
3.  Add the egg and vanilla.
4.  Add flour, bak­ing soda and salt.
5.  Form into small wal­nut sized balls.
6.  Roll in white sugar and place them on a cookie sheet.
7.  Bake for 8 to 10 min­utes.
8.  Press Her­shey Kiss into each cookie when fresh out of the oven.Makes about 2 1/2 dozen.

***TIP*** It really helps to have removed the foil wrap­pers from the kisses BEFORE the cook­ies come out of the oven.  I did it for the first batch but was scram­bling to get them unwrapped for the sec­ond batch before the  cook­ies cooled too much as they break up more when push­ing in the kisses if too cool.

Also, some recipes say to return the cook­ies to the oven for a minute once the kisses are on the cookie but I really don’t pre­fer this as the kisses lost their point and looked more like the teats off a baby bot­tle… um no.  You can see the dif­fer­ence in the two pho­tos since I didn’t do it on the choco­late pep­per­mint cookies.

Have a won­der­ful time mak­ing these cook­ies for your fam­ily and friends!  I know I did.  As always, your email ques­tions are most welcome.

~Colleen