Peppermint Chocolate Cutout Cookies

Christmas is tomorrow! I am super excited. My whole family is together for the first time since 2004! Now there are also some new additions to the family; my three nephews who are six, seven and eight. They arrived last night and in one night they have already raided the whole house, asked Alexa to do everything (to the point of almost asking her to call the cops lol), found all the hidden snacks and broken a couple of my mom’s decorations 😂 If you have a full house and you want to have a Christmasy (yes Christmasy) snack around or even if you want to do some last minute snack gifts, this Peppermint Chocolate Cutout Cookies recipe is a good recipe for that. Also if you have kids with a lot of energy around, this is a good recipe to keep them occupied. They will enjoy the process and look forward to the end results.

These chocolate cookies are dense and fudgy, drizzled (or iced) with white chocolate and topped with crushed peppermint candy. Everyone will love them (unless you hate chocolate like some of my weird friends). I like the contrast in color and flavor of the chocolate cookies and the white chocolate but you can also make some with milk chocolate. I actually adapted this cookie recipe from Smitten Kitchen’s Brownie Roll-Out Cookies but I omitted the baking powder. Baking powder will give it more of a soft almost cakey texture but I wanted a dense chocolatey texture which I think works better with the toppings.

Peppermint Chocolate Cutouts Cookie

Chocolate Cookie

• 1 cup butter (softened)
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 cups all purpose flour

Topping

• 2 to 3 cups of white melting chocolate
• 1 to 2 cups of crushed peppermint candy

Method

Mix butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla and cocoa powder in a large bowl. Gradually add flour mixture and mix until fully combined. Wrap the dough in a plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator for at least an hour. (Or chill in the freezer for 15 minutes if you are impatient like me).

Preheat oven to 350ºF. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Roll the cookie dough out on a floured surface. (You can also roll it between wax paper.) Cut the cookies into shapes of your choice and place them on the cookie sheet. Form the excess dough into a ball, roll it out and make cutouts until all of of the dough is used. Bake the cookies for 8 to 11 minutes depending on the thickness of the cookies. Let them cool.

In a large bowl, melt white chocolate following the package’s instructions. Drizzle white chocolate on the cookies. You can also ice the cookies with the white chocolate. Top the cookies with some crushed peppermint. You might want to do this in batches so the chocolate doesn’t harden before you put the peppermint candy. Let the chocolate cool, dust of any excess peppermint pieces and enjoy.