Chocolate-Peppermint Sandwiches

Christmas will soon be here! This being my last week teaching piano lessons for the year, I decided to bake cookies for all 25 of my students. I settled on Gingerbread Men and Chocolate-Peppermint Sandwiches, two new recipes. I stocked up on flour, sugar, butter and eggs, bought plastic goodie bags decorated with grinning gingerbread men and got up early to start baking before breakfast.

My kitchen turned into a war zone. Baking two cookie recipes at the same time (while also trying to prep Shepherd's Pie for dinner) has its challenges. Mostly empty bowls crusted with various colors of icing, other bowls half-full of cookie dough, stackable cooling racks piled high with tempting sweets, and many, many dirty dishes littered my kitchen counters, cart, cabinet, sink and even my footstool. Obnoxiously loud timers beeped urgently as I rushed from freezer to sink to oven and back again. Miniature men, decorated carefully with icing and "cookie toppers" smiled blankly at me from the table they were occupying while I ran here and there. And it all had to be done by 3 o'clock when I would leave for my work day, laden with toothsome gifts for my little prodigies.

At one point I waved a red bowl, filled with pink, peppermint icing, under my husband's nose and eagerly asked what he thought. He sniffed, looked perplexed and told me it smelled like toothpaste. Thankfully, when he actually took a bite of the soft, chocolate-y cookies glued together with a thin line of pink peppermint, he exclaimed that they were the perfect marriage of chocolate and peppermint and they did NOT taste like toothpaste. Phew.

Chocolate-Peppermint Sandwiches

Makes 18 sandwiches

1 1/2 cups flour

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

3/4 cup packed brown sugar

5 T. butter

1 T. water

1 large egg, lightly beaten

1/2 cup (heaped) powdered sugar
2 T. butter, softened
2 tsp. milk

1/8 tsp. peppermint extract

2 drops red or green food coloring

For the Cookie:

Combine flour, baking soda and salt in a medium sized bowl.

In a medium saucepan, heat chocolate chips, brown sugar, butter and water over low heat, 

whisking until consistency is smooth. 

Be careful. If you heat too fast, the chocolate will separate. 

Off the heat, quickly whisk in the egg.

Work fast to incorporate the egg so that it doesn't cook and make scrambled eggs in your cookies! Alternately, you can let the chocolate mixture cool before adding in the egg. 

It'll look something like this.

Add chocolate mixture to the flour mixture and stir until incorporated.

The consistency will be very thick -- a lot like play-doh.

Portion cookie dough out onto parchment lined baking sheet, 1 T. at a time.

It's important to measure the dough so that your cookies will all be the same size!

Press on each cookie with the bottom of a drinking glass to flatten them a little. 

Bake at 350 degrees for 8 - 10 minutes. Watch closely so you don't overbake!

Transfer to wire rack and cool completely.

For the Icing:

 Whisk powdered sugar, butter, milk, peppermint extract and food coloring together in a small bowl.

Add a little more milk to get the right consistency. You want it to be spreadable, but not runny.

Spread about a teaspoon of icing on the bottom of a cookie.

Top with another cookie! 

Cookies can be kept in an airtight container for up to two days.

This recipe is from Cook's Country.