Mini Chip Peppermint Crisps, OH MY

These are my first huge discovery of the Christmas cookie baking season. Every year I make an effort to try some new recipes, create some new traditions. Some of the really successful cookies of past Christmases (that are not family recipes) include Gale Gand’s Hungarian Shortbread, Carole Walter’s Scottish Shortbread, and a recipe found on the Cooking Light Bulletin Board (CLBB) for Mocha Truffle cookies, which were so successful I now make them year round, forget about this holiday only stuff (apparently I have not shared them yet though–I will have to remedy that).

I recently posted on the CLBB asking if anyone had made Sunset’s Mint Chippers, a cookie recipe which had intrigued me. In that thread, a fellow BB’er posted the recipe for these cookies, saying he sometimes used mint chips. I decided to try his recipe first instead, only I added peppermint extract to the actual cookie dough.

Not the prettiest cookie, these cookies are kind of like a peppermint chocolate shortbread (are you noticing a Holiday shortbread theme for me?), crumbly and sandy and cool with mint. They actually remind me somewhat of Girl Scout Thin Mints, which I am hesitant to say because I would not want anyone disappointed in them.

These are so good it is hard to say whether I will be inspired to try the other recipe. Andy, the BB’er who posted the recipe, prefers these cookies truly golden and crispy-crunchy. I made them that way and a little less baked. I preferred them less baked, I think because while the buttery flavor was more pronounced the way he made them, the peppermint flavor was less pronounced, which I did not like, and I liked the crumbly sandy texture of the less cooked cookie, as opposed to the crispy- crunchy.

I am submitting these to Food Blogga‘s Eat Christmas Cookies Season 2 blogging event. I hope you guys have been over to the on-going round-up page to check out all of the amazing cookies being baked this year for the Holidays.

Mini Chip Peppermint Crisps
Adapted from CLBB, originally from the Ontario Milk Marketing Board

2 1/4 cups AP flour
1 t kosher salt
1 1/4 cups (2 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 t peppermint extract
3/4 cup mini chocolate chips
3/4 cup Andes thin mint baking chips (if you only have mini chips, try increasing the peppermint extract)

Preheat the oven to 325 F. Line a baking sheet with parchment or silicone.

Whisk together flour and salt. Cream butter; gradually beat in sugar, peppermint and vanilla. Add the flour mixture to the creamed butter mixture, in 2 parts. Stir until smoothly combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Form dough into 1-inch balls. Place on cookie sheet; flatten to rounds approximately 2 inches in diameter with the bottom of a glass dipped in flour or icing sugar. Bake in the oven 10 or 11 minutes, rotating from front to back halfway through, just until one or two cookies start to show a little browning at the edges. Cool on pan for 5 minutes and then transfer to a cooling rack.