This recipe comes to you courtesy of Karlynn at The Kitchen Magpie, after I had an inexplicable and sudden desire for that inimitable combination of mint and chocolate.  Mint chocolate chip ice cream wouldn’t suffice, I wanted cookies!  I came across Karlynn’s recipe and found it to be a simple, quick, and delicious solution.

The consistency of these cookies closely resembles the Chocolate Chip Molasses Cookies that I made earlier in the year; fairly dense but not overly chewy, and not too heavy either.  They’re certainly not as soft as the Chocolate Brownie Cookies, so if you’re looking for something in between super chewy and super soft, this should do nicely.  Pre-minted chocolate chips make this a very straight-forward recipe and the cookies are not left wanting for mint flavor; the balance works great.

Yield: ~5 dozen
Preparation Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup white sugar (165g)
• 3/4 cup brown sugar (170g)
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 1/4 cup mint chocolate chips (250g)

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.
3. Cream together the butter and sugars until well-combined.
4. Add the vanilla and the first egg and mix until well-combined, then add the other egg and mix again.
5. Add the dry ingredients slowly, no more than 1/4 of the volume at a time, blending until well-combined each time.
6. Fold in the chocolate chips.
7. Drop tablespoon-sized amounts of dough onto the lined baking sheets.
8. Bake for 9-10 minutes until the edges are crisp and the middles are slightly firm.
9. Let cool for 3-5 minutes on the trays and then transfer to wire racks to cool completely.

Thoughts:

• If you can’t get your hands on chocolate chips that already have peppermint flavor mixed into them, you could either use straight mint chips, which might be a little strong, or you could add peppermint extract.  I would start with 2 tsp of extract, the stuff seems to be quite strong, and add it at the same time as the vanilla.  If that doesn’t produce a minty enough cookie, work your way up in 1/2 or 1 tsp increments until you get the flavor you want.  On the plus side, while you’re experimenting you’ll have buckets of very chocolatey cookies to share!  This strategy could also work if the mint chocolate chips alone don’t make these cookies minty enough for you.

Step-by-Step:

Start with your dry ingredients.  There’s a nice mix of colors so you can be satisfied that you’ve thoroughly whisked everything together once you have a consistent color and pattern.  My cocoa powder tends to clump a bit, thus the brown dots in the mix.

Now tackle the butter and sugars.  I can’t resist action-shots of the stand mixer at work…

There’s a lot of butter in these cookies, so you’ll reach a very fluffy consistency.

Now you can add in the dry ingredients, just a little at a time.  I used a 1/2 cup for this and kept the mixer running on low speed.  The dough will still be fairly moist once everything’s in.

The last ingredient, and possibly the most important, can now be folded in!

These cookies do spread out a bit on the trays, so give them plenty of room to themselves.  Considering all the cocoa powder involved you won’t be able to tell a color change, that “edges turning golden brown” cue that lets you know cookies are done, but the tops should be crispy and feel soft and spongy if you push them a little with a fingertip.

Now for the best part, you get to eat them!