{Peppermint Crinkles}

Although the season of peppermint has come to an end (well, for normal people. I plan to still order americanos with peppermint until atleast march), I had to share this recipe for peppermint crinkle cookies my mom & I made over the holiday break. Just in case there are any of you out there who are not ready to say goodbye to pepperminty goodness...or christmas for that matter.

Crinkle cookies always remind me of my mom. I think she told me once that she loved them as a child, and I remember baking them for the first time with her when I was young. I love the way the cookies look, all individual and unique, like snowflakes.

{sugar & eggs}

{melted chocolate}

{combined wet}

{combined with dry}

Painstakingly, this dough needs to be refrigerated for atleast a couple hours, but we let it sit over night. The peppermint extract & chocolate needed a little extra time to party together, before making the fun little balls into cookies. It is so worth the wait, the flavor was incredible when these were done!

A coat of granulated sugar and a heavy coat of confectioners sugar on the little balls make the cracking nice and obvious. Beware, the dough is sticky and this part gets kind of messy. Which is why my mom got the task of rolling the balls! I stuck to the sugar coating.

Aren't they just the loveliest? I packaged most of the cookies up and gave them out as gifts, which seemed to be a big hit! 

Peppermint Crinkle Cookies

adapted from Bakers Royale

Ingredients:

• 1 3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons spooned and leveled all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• ½ teaspoon salt
• 8 ounces semi-sweet chocolate
• 2 3/4 cups sugar, divided
• 1/4 cup of canola oil
• 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and warm, not hot
• 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
• 2 large eggs
• 1 large egg yolk
• 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
• 1 ½ teaspoons of peppermint extract
• 1 cup powdered sugar

- In a medium bowl, mix together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside.

- Melt the chocolate in the microwave in 30 second increments, stirring in between, until melted.

- Beat together 2 1/2 cups of the sugar, the oil, butter and corn syrup to blend. Beat in the eggs, egg yolk, vanilla and peppermint extract. Beat in the melted chocolate.

- Add the flour mixture and beat in on low speed.

- Wrap the dough in plastic and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

- Heat oven to 325 degrees F. Line bakesheet with parchment.

- Roll the dough into 3 inch balls. Pour the remaining 1/4 cup granulated sugar into one bowl and the confectioners’ sugar in another bowl. Roll each cookie dough ball lightly in granulated sugar first, then very heavily in confectioners’ sugar.

- Arrange cookies 2 inches apart. For a chewier cookie, bake 10-12 minutes. Bake one sheet at a time.

{Weekend Shots & Chocolate Chip Cookies}

This past Friday night, Saturday & Sunday I mastered the art of the perfect weekend ratio. I ran errands, stayed out late, caught up on sleep, cleaned, worked on the apartment & had a lot of fun!

Some snaps:

 I am a hot coffee drinker. I've hated iced coffee for as long as I can remember. After suffering through last summer in Arizona drinking hot drip coffee & americanos and trying to smile through the beads of sweat, I've decided to make the jump. Starting over the weekend. 

Fruit & more fruit. 

Strawberries in my oatmeal & sliced fresh pineapple for easy lunch assembly.

Also, I'm totally a sucker for baking requests. Chris & Brandon asked me to make chocolate chip cookies, and even offered to buy the ingredients! I just couldn't refuse. PLUS this gave me the opportunity to try the cookies with powdered pudding, instead of the pudding cups. I used this recipe.

Mmm. It also gave me an opportunity to test out my new handy cookie scooper! Every cookie was perfect sized. Seriously, I've never been so impressed. No wonder Martha uses one too. 

To settle the powdered pudding vs. pudding pudding debate... my vote goes with powdered!

The cookies were fluffy and chewy, even more so than the oatmeal chocolate chip ones. 

Now I'll just have to try it out on the oatmeal version to make sure that it actually is the best way to go. 

Finally, the BEST part of my weekend - 

Chris & I hung up my painting!

Now I just need to figure out how to dispel the constant anxiety over it ripping out of my wall/falling/wire snapping/ruining. 

It is scaring the crap out of me.

{C is for cookie}

My most favorite cookie that is. 

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

These cookies are phenomenal. Maybe it's the pseudo-healthy oatmeal ingredient that makes me feel a little less guilty. Maybe it's the chocolate chips which I allow to overflow in the measuring cup before pouring them in. When it comes to chocolate chips, I always opt for the more the merrier. I mean come on, think of all that air space between the chips when you measure them out! So I try to even it out.

Cookies are a difficult one for me. When baking, I tend to lean towards treats like cupcakes, cakes & brownies to satisfy my sugary cravings. I love cookies, and I love the idea of cookies, but don't often venture into the cookie section of a cookbook to find my evening recipe. Obviously Christmas is a different story. But it's not Christmas, so my point still stands.

Enter secret ingredient. I first tried a pudding injected cookie my senior year in college, when my friend Sara made the most chewy, melty, chocolate chip cookies I had ever tried. I think I inhaled three in the span of 35 seconds, and have not been able to get over the taste since. After demanding she share the recipe with me for the crack choco cookies, she told me it was just a normal recipe with the addition of this elementary school lunch box filler. I was intrigued. 

Safe to say that curiosity did not kill the cookie. More like made the cookie the best cookie ever. I have no idea if I got the recipe ratios right, or if I should have added more flour to make up for the vanilla pudding, but it's whatever. I'm just happy they made it into the oven at all, after several sessions of needing to "clean" the utensils, and "taste test" to make sure the batter tasted okay. Of course it did. 

All goodness. This was right after I took them out of the oven, so the top is a little gooey. This picture alone should tell you how good they smell/how antsy I was to try it! Scalding hot or not it was going to be eaten. Surprisingly too, the cookies got BETTER as they sat in a tuperware on my counter. Aging like wine. How fancy.