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Hubby has a work Hol­i­day party tomor­row so I decided to make cook­ies instead of cup­cakes for a change.  Plus, who can resist some of the great cookie recipes syn­ony­mous with this time of year.  I went with a tried and true favourite — the peanut but­ter cookie with a choco­late kiss pushed into the top.  While at the store buy­ing kisses I saw the white and red striped pep­per­mint vari­ety and thought how fun they would look in a choco­late cookie, so I made those also.

Here are the two quickie recipes which will have you rolling in cook­ies in very short order:

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 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 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:

• 1/2 cup of unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup of white sugar
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1/2 cup peanut but­ter (I like to use crunchy but we only had smooth on hand)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 3/4 cup flour
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
• 1 tea­spoon salt
• Her­sheys Kisses — 1 for each cookie

Method:

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

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I love hot choco­late.  My daugh­ters love hot choco­late.  In the past we’ve bought and tried many pack­aged mixes with some degree of plea­sure.  It’s a cold day here in Okla­homa so I thought why not try mak­ing some from scratch.  This is a recipe my Mum passed on to me.  Very easy, tasty and rich.

Ingre­di­ents:

1 can of sweet­ened con­densed milk (I pre­fer Eagle Brand)
1/2 cup cocoa or drink­ing choco­late (I used Cadbury’s this time, yum)
1 tea­spoon of vanilla
pinch of salt
3 cups of milk
3 cups of warm water

Mini marsh­mal­lows are optional but a nice addition.

Method:

Place all ingre­di­ents in a saucepan over medium heat.  Stir to com­bine.  Heat all ingre­di­ents until the desired tem­per­a­ture but do not boil.  You can keep this cov­ered in the refrig­er­a­tor for later drinks, warm­ing in the microwave or on the stovetop.

Serve warmed to desired temp and topped with mini marsh­mal­lows!  You can also add a dash of pep­per­mint essence for a choc mint treat or for those of us who indulge, try adding a shot of Kahlua.. mmm­mmm..  ENJOY and Happy Hol­i­days to you all.

Colleen

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My friend Curt turned the big 50 recently. His wife Kristi and fam­ily threw him a party in Omaha’s Old Mar­ket area. I offered to make the cake and also wanted to sur­prise him by just show­ing up at the party.

I made him a four layer chocolate/yellow mar­ble cake with a mild cof­fee flavoured ganache as fill­ing. I also cov­ered the cake in a ganache frost­ing and made choco­late tomb­stones as dec­o­ra­tion. The board was also cov­ered in a swirl of dif­fer­ent coloured choco­late. My hus­band and I packed the cake in a heavy duty box sur­rounded by ice packs to make the long 500 mile jour­ney from Okla­homa City to Omaha Nebraska and set off about 4:30am on the Sat­ur­day morn­ing of the party.

The trip was going well until we were about 20 min­utes south of Wichita Kansas. It had been rain­ing heav­ily dur­ing the week and we totally dis­re­garded the Turn­pike truck with the big arrow on one of the side exit ramps. It wasn’t flash­ing or out in the mid­dle of the inter­state so all must be ok. Not two min­utes later the traf­fic came to a halt.

So we sat on Inter­state 35 North for an hour before a nice police offi­cer came to tell us that there was impass­able water over the road just ahead of us and we could drive up the inside of the trucks and turn through the 4ft high median where there was a break. Long story short… We arrived in Omaha about two hours late but they all got to enjoy the cake and Curt was really sur­prised. The restau­rant Chef said he and the staff thought it was one of the best cakes they had tasted in a long time! Yay! Happy Birth­day Curt xx.

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Today’s cake is a choco­latey mint layer cake.  My friends told me it tastes just like a girl scout thin mint cookie so that is what I’ve decided to call it!  I started with two 10 inch dev­ils food cakes soaked with a kahlua sim­ple syrup.  These were split and lay­ered with a mild mint flavoured French but­ter­cream.  To fin­ish off I crumb coated the entire cake with the mint but­ter­cream and then cov­ered it with a crust­ing choco­late Amer­i­can but­ter­cream.  Fresh mint leaves dipped in choco­late were used as dec­o­ra­tion and I also made a rose from choco­late mod­el­ing fon­dant which isn’t in this photo.

I will type up the entire recipe tonight and add it to this post, promise!

Recipe for Thin Mint Layer Cake

Com­po­nents

2 Dev­ils food cakes — I used 10 inch
French But­ter­cream
Amer­i­can But­ter­cream
Fresh Mint Leaves dipped in melted choco­late or ganache.
Choco­late Mod­el­ing Fon­dant for Rose if you like.

Dev­ils Food Cake
(You will need to use a dig­i­tal scale for these measurements)

Ingre­di­ents

12.6 oz. Cake flour
15.12 oz. Gran­u­late sugar
7.5 ounces Emul­si­fied short­en­ing
2.5 ounces Cocoa pow­der
0.38 ounce Salt
0.5 ounce Bak­ing pow­der
0.3 ounce Bak­ing soda
1.58 ounces Dry milk pow­der
0.3 fluid ounce Vanilla extract
2.5 ounces Corn syrup
11.35 fl. oz. Water, cold
10 oz Eggs

Method

1.    Mix the cake flour, sugar and emul­si­fied short­en­ing in a large mixer bowl on low speed for 5 minutes.

2.    Add the cocoa pow­der, salt, bak­ing pow­der, bak­ing soda, dry milk pow­der, vanilla, corn syrup and 1 quart (1 liter) cold water. Blend well, and then scrape down the bowl.

3.    Com­bine the eggs with the remain­ing 1 quart 8 ounces (1250 mil­li­liters) of cold water and add to the bat­ter in three equal parts, blend­ing well and scrap­ing down the bowl after each addition.

4.    After all the ingre­di­ents are incor­po­rated, blend on low speed for 2 minutes.

5.    Divide into greased and floured pans, scal­ing for each sheet pan or 1round layer.

6.    Bake at 340°F (170°C) until springy and a tooth­pick inserted in the cen­ter comes out clean.

French But­ter­cream

Ingre­di­ents

1 lb. 3 oz. Gran­u­lated sugar
3 ounces Corn syrup or glu­cose
6 fluid ounces Water
3 Eggs
10 Egg yolks
1 lb. 10 oz. Unsalted but­ter, room tem­per­a­ture
1 fluid ounce mint extract

Method

1.    Com­bine the sugar, corn syrup or glu­cose and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil.

2.    Mean­while, place eggs and yolks in the bowl of a mixer fit­ted with the whip attach­ment; start whip­ping the mix­ture on medium speed the moment the sugar solu­tion begins to boil.

3.    Con­tinue boil­ing until the syrup reaches 250°F (121°C). When the syrup is ready, increase the mixer speed to high and care­fully pour the sugar syrup in a steady even stream down the inside of the bowl.

4.    Con­tinue whip­ping until the mix­ture is cool and mousselike.

5.    Reduce the speed to medium and grad­u­ally add the soft but­ter; whip until light and aerated.

6.    Add mint extract.
Amer­i­can Buttercream

Ingre­di­ents

1 pound Lightly salted but­ter, soft­ened
2 ounces Pas­teur­ized egg, optional
2 pounds Pow­dered sugar, sifted
2 tea­spoons mint extract

Method

1.    Using a mixer fit­ted with the pad­dle attach­ment, cream the but­ter until light and fluffy.

2.    Beat in the egg if desired. Grad­u­ally add the sugar, fre­quently scrap­ing down the sides of the bowl.

3.    Add the mint extract and con­tinue beat­ing until the icing is smooth and light.

Cake Assem­bly

Cut both cakes into two lay­ers.
Brush on some of the sim­ple syrup.
Fill lay­ers with mint french but­ter­cream.
Crumb coat all stacked lay­ers with mint but­ter­cream.
Freeze until crumb coat is solid.
Remove from freezer and frost cake with choco­late but­ter­cream.
Allow it to “crust” or dry some.  Using a Viva Brand paper towel (no pat­tern) place paper towel over frost­ing and smooth with frost­ing smooth­ing tool or hand.  Move paper towel around the cake con­tin­u­ing to smooth.  Dec­o­rate as you wish.  Eat and enjoy!

Orig­i­nal recipes cour­tesy of  On Bak­ing — Laben­sky (slight mod­i­fi­ca­tions by me)