Enjoy these soft, chocolate peppermint cookies with a hot cup of coffee or a tall glass of milk this holiday season. They are easy to whip up and provide nice contrast to your holiday cookie plate.
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These cookies aren’t “slap you in the face” kind of peppermint. (You know what I’m talking about, the kind that makes you pucker up your face and sneeze 15 times). They are more like “warm hug on a cold night” kind of peppermint.
The chocolate cookie isn’t too shabby either. I tend to shy away from chocolate cookies, either they are too crunchy or they leave me wishing for more chocolate flavor. These are more like a tiny brownie. Soft, chewy, full of cocoa powder, which has the highest amount of cocoa solids (a.k.a. chocolate flavor crystals) of any type of chocolate. Additionally, they have a healthy dose of chocolate chunks to really pump up the chocolate flavor.
Why does our cookie taste like a tiny brownie?
There are a few reasons, but the big one is the type of fat we use. Instead of butter, these cookies are made with vegetable oil. The oil has a neutral flavor, so it doesn’t compete with the chocolate, giving us super chocolaty flavor. Oil is also an unsaturated fat which contributes to the chewy quality by not adding extra air to the system due to the nature of it’s chemical make-up.
The incredible, edible, egg also plays it’s role in this cookie magic by emulsifying the oil with the other ingredients. Which basically means, the egg helps mix ingredients that wouldn’t normally mix together by making very tiny droplets. The egg reduce surface tension and reduce the amount of force required to make the droplets. Pretty much, the egg makes it so the oil plays nice with the other ingredients and doesn’t make your batter greasy.
Another reason for tiny brownie magic: these babies are mixed by hand without much flour. Most cookie recipes call for at least 2 cups of flour, but by keeping the amount of flour on the lower side, we increase the fudgey quality of the cookie.
Mixing by hand helps ensure that we don’t over-mix the flour, encouraging gluten development. Gluten development in bread=awesome. Gluten development in brownies/cookies/cookies that taste like brownies=not awesome. Makes for tough cookies/brownies which is never what we want.
Soft Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup oil
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 eggs
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup peppermint chips
- 1/3 cup chocolate chips
Instructions
- Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees. Line two large cookie sheets with parchment. If you don’t have parchment, grease your pan and consider purchasing a roll of parchment.
- In a large bowl, add the oil, sugar, and cocoa powder. Stir until combined.
- Add eggs to mixture one at a time and stir until combined.
- Add in vanilla and baking powder. Stir until combined.
- Add in the flour. Stir until combined. The mixture will be thick and sticky, like thick brownie batter. That’s what we’re going for. Don’t add in more flour.
- Fold in the chocolate chips and peppermint chips.
- Scoop by the tablespoonful onto your parchment lined cookie sheets leaving 4 fingers worth of space between each cookie.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. Baking chocolate cookies is tricky, they are super easy to burn because obviously you can’t tell when they are getting too brown. You want to pull them out of the oven when the tops are no longer shiny.
- Cool and enjoy. Actually, enjoy before they’re totally cool. These cookies really shine when they are a little bit warm and gooey from the oven.
Notes
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