Every year I always want to put something minty in my cookie boxes. Peppermint just seems to be a must during the holiday season what with seeing candy canes all over the place. I was tempted to remake last year's mint chocolate chip truffles, but decided at the last minute to try something new this year. I searched for candy cane cookie recipe and found these cute cookies. They're super festive and just minty enough, a wonderful addition to a set of holiday cookies.
Candy Cane Cookies
adapted from A Good Appetite
2/3 cups butter, room temperature
3/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp milk
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp peppermint extract
pinch of salt
red food coloring
Mix the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside for now. In a separate bowl, cream the butter and sugar together. Add the egg. Then mix in the milk and peppermint extract. Add the dry ingredients and mix until a dough comes together. Split the dough in half. Wrap one half on plastic wrap and refrigerate.
Add red food coloring to the other half of the dough and mix until the coloring is evenly distributed. Then wrap the red dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate. The dough should be chilled for about 3 hours.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. To shape the cookies, first divide the two doughs into 50 pieces each. Take one red piece of dough and one white piece of dough. Roll both dough pieces into 5 inch snakes. Twist the two snakes together. Pinch the two ends of the twist.
Roll the whole twist a bit against the table so the two dough snakes stick better together. Then place the twist on a parchment lined baking sheet. Hook down the top of the twist to form a candy cane shape. Repeat with the rest of the dough. Bake the cookies for 8-10 minutes, or until the bottoms begin browning. Leave on the baking sheet a few minutes, then move to a wire rack to finish cooling.
Makes 50 cookies.
OMG! Too cute! I may have to try doing a pink version for Valentines day. :D
ReplyDeleteThese are SO cute!
ReplyDeleteThose cookies are absolutely darling. I have a sweet treat linky party going on at my blog till Monday night and I'd love it if you'd stop by and link your cookies up. http://sweet-as-sugar-cookies.blogspot.com/2011/12/sweets-for-saturday-50.html
ReplyDeleteHidden_Relic: That sounds adorable! And you could make them heart shaped too (two candy canes stuck together).
ReplyDeleteElizabeth: Thanks!
Lisa: I'll check it out :).
Such cute cookies! And the colors are amazing, so bright and christmasy :) Happy 2012!
ReplyDeleteyour cookies looks delicious as always!!!
ReplyDeletei wonder that how you can take those beautiful pictures, especially the lighting of your photos... can you tell me?
I don't know if I could eat 50 cookies, can these be frozen?
ReplyDeletemylovelybites: Thanks! Happy 2012 to you too!
ReplyDeletesapphire~: Thank you. For my pictures, I always try to use natural sunlight, especially for my main photos. Never use a camera's built-in flash to take photos of food as it makes food look... not right and washed out. Try to avoid flash and artificial light if you have no idea how to deal with them.
Since I tend to do my baking at night, I do end up using artificial light for many of my step-to-step photos (in the middle of my posts with the recipes) but they always turn out not as good and require lots of color fixing in photoshop. Practice definitely makes a big difference, experimenting with different angles, and reading up on photography, in particular food photography (many food bloggers have posts filled with photography tips, try a google search).
Anonymous: Haha, I don't think I could either. And yes they can be frozen. Once they're cooled after baking, place them in an airtight container and freeze the extras. When you want to eat them, let them first return to room temperature before consuming.
Awesome idea! But I was wondering, are these cookies soft/chewy? Or hard/crisp?
ReplyDeleteThey're hard/crisp :).
DeleteThese cookies are a family tradition started by my mother many years ago. We crush up candy canes in a Ziploc bag with a hammer on top of a sturdy cutting board. Then we sprinkle the crumbs mixed with a little cane sugar on top of the just-out-of-the-oven cookies.
ReplyDeleteWhat happens if you don't chill the dough?
ReplyDelete