Day 24 of "25 Days of Angels Baking Christmas Memories!"
These will become your favorite Christmas Cookie!
What could be a better cookie than turning your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and adding peppermint buttercream in the middle for a festive and delicious sandwich cookie? If you don’t have a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, use mine below. Or, if you need them FAST, go ahead and purchase a good quality cookie from your favorite bakery. Okay, some of those big box stores have some good cookies that would work great for this special sandwich cookie. But if you make them yourself you can add peppermint extract to the cookie dough. That’s the best!
If you especially like peppermint, put peppermint extract in both the cookie dough and the buttercream frosting. If you’d rather have just a hint of the peppermint flavoring, but that extract to half or just put it in the buttercream frosting. It’s your choice.
All you need is a very good chocolate chip cookie with peppermint extract added, some peppermint buttercream frosting (don’t be afraid of making it yourself – it’s easy!) plus some candy cane sprinkles, red and green sugar sprinkles, or other sprinkles of your choice for the holidays.
Recipe yield:
This recipe produces 4 dozen cookies, using a 2 tablespoon scoop for 3” cookies. You can make more out of this recipe if you scoop them a little smaller. After sandwiched together, you’ll have about 2 dozen treats.
Prep your cookie sheets:
Line your cookie sheets with parchment paper so clean up is faster when you’re all done baking. I love the parchment paper because the cookies ALWAYS slide right off.
Preheat your oven to 375 a few minutes before you’re ready to slide the cookies in the oven.
Peppermint Double Chocolate Cookie Ingredients:
1 C Butter, room temperature
¾ C Sugar
¾ C Brown Sugar, dark
2 Eggs
1 t Vanilla extract
1 t Peppermint extract
2 C Flour
¼ C Cocoa, Dutch processed
1 t Baking soda
1 t Salt
½ C Chocolate chips, mini semi-sweet
1 C Chocolate chips, dark chocolate
6-8 Candy Canes, broken up for rolling the sandwich cookies
Double down on the dough mixing:
- Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs, one at a time and beat well.
- Stir in the peppermint and vanilla extracts.
- Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt together into the wet mixture.
- Mix well. If the batter seems too wet, add a little more flour.
- Stir all the chocolate chips in at the very last, making sure they are evenly distributed.
Bake the cookies for sandwiches:
- Scoop the cookie dough out in balls. I like to use a 2 tablespoon scoop, scraping the top edge of the scoop on the side of the bowl so all the scooped balls are the same size. If you are making sandwiches, you want them pretty much the same shape and size after they are baked. This recipe will make about 4 dozen cookies so you end up with 2 dozen sandwiched cookies.
- Bake at 375F degrees for 8-10 minutes. They should be soft on the inside and crispy on the outside. I check them at 8 minutes and rotate the pans since my oven bakes hotter on one side.
- Cool each pan on a rack for a couple minutes before transferring the cookies from the pan to another rack to cool completely. Set aside until you are ready to frost and make sandwiches. If you are not ready to make the sandwiches the same day, the cookies can be frozen up to a month.
Peppermint Buttercream Frosting Ingredients:
2 T Meringue Powder
1/3 C Water
2 C Powdered Sugar
Pinch of Salt
2 t Vanilla extract
1 t Peppermint extract
1 1/4 C Shortening, white (not vegetable oil)
7-9 C Powdered Sugar
Make your Peppermint Buttercream frosting:
- Beat the meringue powder and water until soft peaks form.
- Add the 2 C powdered sugar and pinch of salt and stir thoroughly.
- Add both of the extracts, stirring thoroughly.
- Alternately add the shortening and the rest of the powdered sugar in thirds, beating thoroughly and scraping the bowl after each addition.
- Beat until frosting is light and fluffy. Set aside with plastic wrap covering it.
Prepare the candy canes sprinkles:
- Place the candy canes in a sealed plastic bag, and place the bag between two towels.
- Break up the candy canes by pounding a rolling pin or the flat broad side of a meat tenderizer on the towel.
- Check periodically to see how large the pieces are. I like a combination of finely powder-chopped candy canes and some pieces a bit larger.
- Pour the chopped candy canes into a shallow bowl. Set aside.
Put the Peppermint Double Chocolate Chip Sandwiches together:
- Spread or pipe a thick layer of the peppermint buttercream frosting on half of the cookies, making sure the frosting comes all the way out to the edges.
- Place the blank cookies on top of the frosted so you have sandwiches.
- Press the cookies together so some frosting oozes out just past the edges. This ensures the broken candy cane pieces will stick when you roll the cookies.
- Roll the edges of all the cookies in the broken up candy canes. You may need to push some of the larger pieces in a little to make sure they stick.
- They are pretty with the dark chocolate cookies accented with the white and red of the candy cane pieces
Gift Giving:
- Nobody can refuse a Peppermint Double Chocolate Chip Cookie Sandwich surrounded in candy cane pieces. I like to wrap these individually in plastic wrap and then layering them in a special holiday tin. The plastic wrap keeps the candy cane pieces from flying around in the tin while transporting the cookies, and keeps them from drying out. Layer them with parchment paper or holiday papers to fit the tins. When you open the tin, the peppermint aroma fills the room.
Storage:
- Store the completed sandwich cookies in an airtight plastic container.
- If I don’t need all of the completed sandwich cookies right away, I’ll make up some of the sandwiches and freeze the rest of the individual cookies in a sealable plastic bag. I freeze them up to a month. Later, let the frozen cookies thaw before they are frosted and made into sandwiches.
- The frosting can be stored in a sealable plastic bag and refrigerated for a week or so.
- Candy canes and broken candy cane pieces can be kept almost “forever” in a sealable plastic bag in a cool spot in the pantry. (Heat and humidity could make them sticky, even though they still taste good.)
Peppermint is a favorite of mine during the holidays, often adding it to my café mocha, hot chocolate and best of all, double chocolate chip cookies. This is another recipe that’s fun to work on with the kids. Just make sure you “Bake your own Memories” with the ones you love. Merry Christmas!