Peppermint Meltaways

Okay, look, I'm not going to lie to you. 

This is a Christmas cookie.

I came to a very real realization (real realization?) last week. Here it is:

There are entirely too many holiday recipes to try in an entirely too short holiday season. 

Right? RIGHT?? You've got all of a month, maybe two if you decide to include November, to make Christmas related food, and you've got a pile of recipes that you've always wanted to try but never have because there was just. no. time. Am I right? I'm not the only one with this problem, I can feel it.

Anyways, this is what I was explaining to Mike the other day as I baked these cookies. He completely understood. Or pretended to so that he could eat cookies. 

Let's face it, I'm going to be listening to Christmas music here in a month or so anyways, I might as well be baking to go along with it.

So, my plan is to bake minty, gingerbready, Christmasy type things throughout the year, and then when Christmas rolls around, I don't need to try anything out. I'll know exactly what I want to bake.

I'm so logical.

Peppermint Meltaways

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• FROSTING:
• 2 tablespoons butter, softened
• 1-1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
• 2 tablespoons 2% milk
• 1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 2 to 3 drops red food coloring, optional
• 1/2 cup crushed peppermint candies

Directions

• In a small bowl, cream butter and confectioners' sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in extract. Combine flour and cornstarch; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.
• Shape into 1-in. balls. Place 2 in. apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes or until bottoms are lightly browned. Remove to wire racks to cool.
• In a small bowl, beat butter until fluffy. Add the confectioners’ sugar, milk, extract and food coloring if desired; beat until smooth. Spread over cooled cookies; sprinkle with crushed candies. Store in an airtight container. Yield: 3-1/2 dozen.

I definitely forgot to take a before picture until they were about a minute into baking. Hence the blurry, oven picture.

These cookies are so. crumbly. and. good. 

There's actually not much sweetness to them. Just a little hint.

The combination of the frosting and the cookie is perfect together. The frosting was SUPER runny, but set up very nicely.

Also, I could've sworn I had Andes mint chunks in my fridge and I was all ready to color the frosting green and put the chunks on top, but I was out of them somehow? So I settled for just regular, old red.

Really good cookies!!

Recipe Source: Taste of Home

Triple Chocolate Peppermint Treats

Remember how I'm on a quest to find a delicious chocolate, brownie type cookie, with delectable frosting and candy cane kisses on top? Remember? WELL I DID IT!

Okay, so the cookie ended up not being a brownie cookie, but oh my gosh y'all, this is a fantastic treat. I had a few people send me good ideas for recipes that were similar to this, and I can pretty much guarantee I will probably end up making all of them at some point or another...
But then I got a Taste of Home email the other day, and this cookie was in it but with crushed up starlight mints on top. I looked at it and I thought "That's cream cheese frosting, I bet chopped up candy cane kisses would be quite yummy on top of that!" And, well, at the risk of sounding like a genius, I was right.

So here you are, a delicious Christmas time treat! (And I PROMISE, I will be getting my mom's caramel recipe to you BEFORE Christmas...)


Triple-Chocolate Peppermint Treats

Ingredients

• 1 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 2 teaspoons Spice Islands® pure vanilla extract
• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup baking cocoa
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup 60% cacao bittersweet chocolate baking chips
• 
  WHITE CHOCOLATE FROSTING:
• 1/2 cup white baking chips
• 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 3 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1/3 to 1/2 cup crushed peppermint candies (or candy cane kisses!!!)

Directions:

• In a large bowl, cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, cocoa, salt and baking soda; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Stir in the chocolate chips.
• Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls 2 in. apart onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 375° for 8-10 minutes or until set. Cool for 2 minutes before removing to wire racks to cool completely.
• In a microwave, melt baking chips; stir until smooth. Cool.
• In a small bowl, beat cream cheese and confectioners' sugar until smooth. Beat in melted chips. Frost cookies; sprinkle with peppermint candies. 

*My only side note, I think a teaspoon is a ridiculously small amount of dough to make a cookie. I did about a tablespoon of dough for each and I got 5 dozen out of this. I also put about a tablespoon of frosting on top of each one and it was practically perfect in every way. Also, when sprinkling on the kisses (or mints), push them into the frosting a little bit. And above all else, for the love, please enjoy these! 

Mike said he could've eaten a whole plate of the cookies by themselves, without the topping. It's all good, either way :)

Anticipaaaaaaaaaaaaation!!!! (read that as if Oprah was saying it)

I flattened them slightly, before baking. It's a very thick dough and won't spread much. You don't have to flatten it, but I prefer flat cookies to round ones. This is suddenly sounding like a conversation about boobs...

I know, right?

It's delicious people!!!!

Recipe source: Taste of Home

A brownie, minty fix

My poor baking blog. I think it feels like it's the red headed step child of my two blogs. I've been baking lately, just things that I've posted on here already, and also I'm not baking as frequently as I used to. Did you know ingredients cost money and a lot of the things that I want to bake have ingredients that cost even more money?

Anyways, I'm going to beat everyone to the punch on resolutions and resolve to give more love and care to this here baking blog!

I will start with the fix I needed Sunday night. I looked in my fridge. I thought "What is it that I want?" I glanced in the door, where I keep ridiculous amounts of bags of baking chips, and saw the bag of Andes mints. Then I remembered I have a couple boxes of brownie mix, and a plan was formed.

Basically this is nothing spectacular, but if you're in need of something chocolately and minty, you need to make this.

This is what you'll need:

Also stuff like eggs and water and oil. But anyways, make the brownie mix. Add the mint chunks. I dumped in the whole bag. Actually there was a little less than a whole bag. I don't know what recipe I had that just called for a small amount of Andes mints. In all reality, I probably just had a craving, opened the bag, and ate a few. 

A note on mixing these into the batter: The whole time I was mixing these up, I kept saying to myself "toss the mints in flour first, toss the mints in flour first, toss the mints in flour first."

Did you know that if you're mixing something like Andes mints into batter, if you toss them in flour first, they won't sink to the bottom when baking?

As I was mixing the mint chunks in, I thought "I forgot to toss the mints in flour first." 

So all of mine sunk to the bottom. It was okay. They were still delicious.

So anyways, bake accordingly and then let cool. If you're going to just hack into them at this point, then just hack into them. If you're going to frost them (like I did) then you need to be more patient than me and let them cool completely before frosting them.

Use whatever frosting you want! I looked up an easy cream cheese frosting and it was delish. Also, mix in some green food coloring just to make things more festive. ALSO, go to your Wilton food colorings, give them a stern look and say "From now on, I'm not using you for important things that need to be colored."

And then go out and get some of these, like a lot of them:

Best. Food coloring. Ever.

Y'all, my mom made black frosting with it, and it was black. BLACK!!! 

The quality of AmeriColor is just fantastic!

Anyways, here's what my brownies looked like:

So. More serious blogging on this here blog. Soon. I promise.

A Yuletide Experiment

Okay, I know I promised that my next Christmas treat posting would be my mom's caramels, but my candy thermometer and I are on the outs currently. You know, a real "she said, it said" type of thing.
Anyways, the other day I was talking to my mom about these:

These are the sorts of things my mother and I talk about frequently. Have you ever had the pleasure of eating a candy cane kiss? This is the time of year when all kinds of kiss flavors start making appearances. Some are great! Some...hmmm.

So, I said to her, I says "I've been thinking about doing maybe a chocolate cookie with those candy cane kisses, kind of like the peanut butter blossoms." And mom says "Ooo like a brownie cookie!" And I said "Now you're talkin'!!!"

It might not have been just like that, but close. I don't have a brownie cookie recipe, so I went in search of one, and I found Martha Stewart's. It's alright. I was really hoping for thicker, fluffier cookies. The batter for these was basically just brownie batter. They didn't seem very cookie like at all, and they spread all over the place and were thin. Here's how they looked:

Cute, I suppose. Yummy looking, maybe. My frosting/glaze was a very spur of the moment minty concoction that I was not at all pleased with.

At this point, I am bound and determined to make this chocolate/brownie/minty/candy cane kiss combination work in some form or fashion.

This is where y'all come in. Have any of you ever made anything like that or seen anything like that? If so, please pass it on to me! I'd love to do a tried and true recipe, or combine a bunch of different ideas into something awesome!

I will not rest, this holiday season, until I have figured this out AND it becomes magical!!! So, if you have any thoughts, or ideas, either leave me a comment or email me sandiroughton@hotmail.com. Please entitle the email "Yuletide Experiment" as it will probably go to my junk folder first...

And you KNOW I'll be sharing the outcome on here!!

Mint Oreo Cupcakes

This is one of those kinds of recipes that I just want to make out with. The reason for this is, it is everything that I expect it to be, perfectly. As soon as I saw the title of this recipe, I had an idea in my head of how these would look. As soon as I read this recipe, I had an idea in my head of how these would taste. As soon as I ate this recipe, it was all confirmed and my knowledge of this recipe was perfected. THESE ARE SO GOOD!!!! I'm sure they would work with regular Oreos as well, but why would you want to do that when you can use the mint ones???

(A side note, I think she must've put a TEENSIE bit of green food coloring in her frosting, because mine didn't turn out green at all, but hers did. Really, it's up to you. That is the ONLY thing I have to add to this recipe! It's THAT GOOD!!!)

Mint Oreo Cupcakes

INGREDIENTS For the cupcakes: 24 Mint Oreos Box Chocolate Cake Mix 1 stick of butter, melted 1 cup water 3 eggs Preheat oven to 350. Line 24 muffin tins with cupcake liners.   Place a Oreo in the bottom of each liner. In the bowl of a mixer, combine cake mix, melted butter, water and eggs.   Beat on low for one minute. Scrape sides of bowl and increase speed to high.  Beat for another minute. Fill muffin tins 2/3 full and bake for about 15 minutes or until tops spring back when lightly touched.   Allow to cool completely on a cooling rack before serving. For Frosting: 15 Mint Oreos, crushed completely into superfine crumbs 4 sticks of butter, softened 4 Tablespoons milk 8 cups powdered sugar 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 2 teaspoons mint extract In the bowl of a mixer, beat butter, milk, and extracts on low speed until smooth and combined.   Slowly add powdered sugar and beat on low until just mixed.   Increase speed to medium high and beat for 2 minutes.   Add cookie crumbs and beat on low until well combined. Pipe frosting on cupcakes (I used a large round tip) and top with an extra Oreo,  if desired.  You can always just regular frost them too. And also your husband can just squeeze the extra frosting directly into his mouth. The anticipation is HORRENDOUS!!! Here's the frosting. Clearly, I desperately need help with my photography skills. Look at that. Drink it in. Eat it up. It's a good thing. Recipe Source:  Confessions of a Cookbook Queen

Chocolate Mint Brownies

I don't know about y'all but I've been on the hunt for a good mint brownie recipe that doesn't include some sort of alcoholic extract and is still awesome. I FOUND IT! In a Family Fun Christmas book of all the places... It's always in the last place you look, right? Since no one responded to my query about whether or not you wanted me to share some of my favorite holiday recipes BEFORE the holidays, I took matters into my own hands and I'm doing it anyways because hello, I love Christmas. As a side note, this calls for a 9 inch pan and I only have an 8 inch one. Mike, I need a 9 inch pan. They were still good, but I think they would be better if I did them the way they were supposed to. Moving on, here's the recipe!

Chocolate Mint Brownies

Brownies:
½ cup butter
4 oz unsweetened chocolate
1 ½ cups sugar
3 eggs
1 ½ tsp vanilla
1 cup flour
½ tsp salt

Mint frosting:

¼ cup softened butter
2 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar
1 ½ to 3 TB milk
½ tsp peppermint extract
Green food coloring

Chocolate topping:

¾ cup semisweet chips
3 TB butter

Heat the oven to 350 and grease a 9 inch square baking pan. For the brownies, place the butter and chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl and cook on high for 1 minutes, stir, cook for 1 minutes more, then stir until smooth. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar and eggs. Stir in the chocolate and vanilla extract. Finally, stir in the flour and salt. Pour into the greased pan and bake for 25 minutes or until a knife inserted in the middle comes out clean. Cool for 1 hour.

For the frosting, cream the butter and confectioners’ sugar. Add the milk 1 tablespoon at a time, beating until it is smooth and spreadable. Beat in the peppermint extract and tine to the desired shade with green food coloring. Frost the cooled brownies, cover, and chill for 1 hour.

To make the topping, put the chocolate chips and butter in a microwave safe bowl and microwave on high for 1 ½ minutes or until the chocolate melts. Stir until smooth. Pour the chocolate over the brownies and smooth it with a knife. Refrigerate for 45 minutes or until the coating hardens.
Bring the brownies to room temperature, then cut into 16 to 32 pieces.

Also, here is another favorite Christmas song of mine. Also sung by Straight No Chaser. ENJOY! (If I keep posting about Christmas recipes, do you think the temperature will start to drop? We're going on temps of about 104-107 for the umpteenth day in a row...)

Recipe Source: Family Fun

Good Heavens!

For the love people, why do you let me go so long without sharing a treat with you? My apologies... I moved back to Austin and then Mike came home and things have just been a bit hectic. I'm glad to be back in Austin though and I am ESPECIALLY glad to have Mike home! Even if only for 2 weeks... But that is another story.

So I totally meant to post this like, a week ago, so that if you needed an idea for St. Patrick's Day dessert then you could use this. But then I moved back to Austin and then Mike came home and-oh wait. It's a little late, but you can definitely use it next year! I just love St. Patrick's Day. Mike and I went to a celebration in downtown Austin last night to see some dancers from the totally awesome school I dance with perform (I wasn't dancing because hello I've been gone from here for 9 months), and he was telling me how sad it must be for a Mormon's favorite holiday to be an alcohol related one. And to that I say 'Tis Blarney! You don't need the alcohol to have fun! I just love Irish things so much... I am really digressing with this post. There is really nothing Irish about this dessert, it's just really good and green. And easy.

Mint Brownie Pie

Ingredients:

6 TB butter

2 oz unsweetened chocolate

1 cup sugar

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup flour

Filling:

1 package (8 oz) cream cheese, softened

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp mint extract

Green food coloring

1 carton (8 oz) frozen whipped topping, thawed - I know, I know, I know, I HATE whipped topping, but when trying a new recipe that calls for it I'm hesitant to make my own. You can go ahead and make your own if you want. It would work.

1/4 cup semisweet chocolate chips, melted

Directions:

In a large saucepan, melt butter and chocolate. Stir in sugar until smooth. Add eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour until well blended.

Pour into a greased 9 inch springform pan. Bake at 350 for 18-20 minutes (mine took about 25...) or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Cool on a wire rack.

In a large bowl, beat cream cheese and sugar until smooth. Beat in extract and food coloring if desired. Fold in whipped topping. Spread evenly over brownie layer. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

Remove sides of pan just before serving. Melt chocolate chips, drizzle over top. Garnish with additional whipped cream and chocolate chips if desired.

This picture is posted for no other reason than it just being chocolate.

This is the filling mixture before I added whipped cream...

...and this is it after I added it. Still green, but if you want it to be darker be sure and add more food coloring before you put in the whipped cream. As I was folding it in, I thought of that but it was too late.

Well there you go! My Irish shakers think you should definitely use this for the next Irish/mint/brownie/chocolate event in your life! It's good stuff.