11 more sugar-filled days...

Walking in a Winter Wonderland, somewhere on the back 40...

Once again, I bring you another cookie recipe. This one is easily one of my favourites because it involves chocolate and mint, a combination I simply adore! This recipe is fairly easy and, like the sugar cookie recipe, provides a multitude of cookies. Enough chatter, here's the recipe for:


Chocolate Mint Truffle Cookies

1 pkg. bittersweet chocolate (if you don't like really dark tasting chocolate, semi-sweet will do)
3/4 cup butter, no substitutions
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
approx 1/3 cup chopped candy canes or mint candies

In one bowl, melt the butter in the microwave. In another large bowl melt the chocolate in the microwave on medium (should take about 2 minutes). Stir chocolate until no lumps remain and then add butter to chocolate and stir until well blended. Stir sugar into the mixture. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing until well blended after each egg is added. Add flour and baking powder; mix well.
At this point the dough will be extremely soft and should be refrigerated in a covered bowl for at least 2 hours.

Once the dough is sufficiently chilled, preheat the oven to 350. Take a heaping teaspoon of dough and roll into a ball, approx. 1 inch in size. Place each ball about 2 inches apart on a non-stick cookie sheet.
Bake cookies for 9-11 minutes, taking care not to overbake. After removing from the oven sprinkle immediately (while the cookies are still soft) with chopped candy canes and push down slightly into the cookie. Cool completely and devour. It should make about 3 dozen cookies.

A note on the melting of chocolate...
It is very, and I mean very, easy to burn chocolate. When using the microwave to melt chocolate if you're afraid of burning it stop it halfway through melting and stir quickly then return to melting. This will give you a good idea how far along it is and whether or not you need to run it for a full minute more.
However, don't dilly-dally when you stop it mid-melt, as the chocolate can harden up quickly too and nobody likes lumpy melted chocolate.

These cookies are awesome for when you want to treat yourself, you know, like at breakfast.

Until next week, keep on art-ing and baking!

A Bit Off Schedule

Okay, okay. So I know I said I was just going to dedicate Friday's to cookies, but Jennifer over at Fuzzy Dragons said she'd lost her sugar cookie recipe. Quite frankly, a Christmas baking bonanza without sugar cookies just isn't acceptable. In fact, you might as well cancel Christmas altogether.

So, to prevent that from happening I'll post the sugar cookie recipe today. However, I did say that I would have art content this week, didn't I? Far be it from me to go back on my word so it's quite fortunate that the cookie posting today ties in nicely with my art.


At the risk of being overly dramatic I will say that this recipe has been with me many moons, dating back (as best I can remember) to about 1983 when my brother and I would make Christmas cookies with my Mom. Actually, it was more like my Mom made the dough and did the baking while I played with the cookie cutters that looked like little animals and my brother wielded the rolling pin and pretended that he was Luke Skywalker...but I digress.
In the booklet that the recipe was written in I liked to draw things, making my artistic prowess and penchant for eating sugary foods well known to my immediate family early in my life. You can see one of the aforementioned doodles below:

The template was supposed to be for toy soldier cookies and I guess I must've thought they looked a little dull... or too manly. I'm really not sure what I was thinking, but I was 4 years old at the time so it's basically a moot point. Besides which, we're not concerned with toy soldier cookies, we're concerned with:


Sugar Cookies

1 cup softened butter (unsalted)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
2 1/4 all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt


In large bowl, beat butter and sugar together. Beat in egg and vanilla until combined with sugar mixture. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt into butter mixture.
Divide dough into thirds then wrap in plastic wrap, refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

When dough has firmed up sufficiently (don't let it get rock solid though), preheat oven to 350 degrees.
On lightly floured surface, roll dough to approx. 1/4 inch thickness (or thinner if you like crispy cookies). Cut desired shapes and place on non-stick cookie sheet. Re-roll scraps from cut outs and continue to make more cookies until the dough has been used up.

Bake in oven for 10-12 minutes, less time the thinner the cookie.


Note:
Some folks like to put icing on the cookies so make sure that they've cooled off enough before icing them or you'll have some crazy psychedelic looking cookies. I prefer to use the little sprinkles prior to popping them in the oven because after spending several hours rolling, cutting and baking the last thing I want to do is decorate the cookies, I want to eat them.
These are also a great cookie to prepare on one day and bake on another since the dough can be refrigerated up to 2 days. So, you could bake one batch and a day or so after that when you realize that you've eaten most of the cookies from the first batch you can just take another ball of the dough from the fridge and make some more.

Time for baking? You betcha!