I am mostly Irish, Scottish, Wales (Welsh), and just a tad of English, so the St. Patrick's Day holiday I have always enjoyed. Ok, let's be honest here (lol). When I was younger, it was the perfect excuse to go to the bar and drink. I am older and hopefully wiser, and those days are loooong gone.
Mint Baking Chips
To celebrate this holiday, I wanted mint and chocolate together in a cookie. I thought I remembered seeing mint baking chips by Hershey's some years ago but could not find them anywhere. I search the stores, then the Internet but still could not find them.
My search took me to a brand I have not used before, but I will certainly try more of their baking chips in the future. I found Green Mint Baking Chips from Guittard that are to die for. They are creamy and have a fantastic mint flavor. These were the perfect compliment to my cream cheese chocolate cookies. The green color of the chips was a bonus against the chocolate color.
Scooping the last pan of cookie dough onto the cookie sheet pan, I realized that the chips had not been distributed in the bottom. Now I could have added more mint chips into the cookie dough. But I thought, why not just add them on top to see how they look. Well, they outshined the other cookies because you could see the chips more vividly. These are the cookies I used for the cookie photo.
Chocolate Mint Cream Cheese Cookies
Ingredients
- 8 oz room temperature Cream Cheese
- ½ cup room temperature Butter unsalted 1 stick
- 1 ½ cups Sugar white 297 g
- ½ tsp Vanilla Extract
- 2 Eggs
- 1 ¾ cups All purpose flour 210 g
- ¾ cup Unsweetened cocoa powder 63 g
- 2 tsp Baking powder 8 g
- ½ tsp Kosher Salt
- 1 cup Green mint baking chips
Instructions
- Weigh or measure the sugar into a small bowl and set aside. In another bowl, weigh or measure the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, salt, and whisk to blend all the ingredients. Just be careful of the cocoa powder; it is light and can fly everywhere if you are not careful.
- In a stand or handheld mixer, add the cream cheese and the butter. Start on a low speed and increase to a medium speed for about 2 to 3 minutes. Turn the mixer off and scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add the sugar. Mix on medium speed for another 2 minutes. It should start to look smooth and creamy at this point. Add the vanilla extract and crack one of the eggs into a small bowl before adding it to the mixer bowl. I do this in case a piece of eggshell happens to break off when I crack the egg open. Incorporate the egg before adding the second egg to the mixer. I stop and scrape down the sides and across the bottom before adding the flour combination.
- Turn the mixer back on to a low speed and slowly add the flour combination till incorporated. At this point, I scrape down the sides and across the bottom to make sure all the flour is mixed into the cookie dough. Add the green mint baking chips and turn on the mixer for 30 seconds or less. You want the mint chips distributed but not breaking apart. I take the bowl off the stand, and using a spatula, I try and make sure that the chips are evenly disbursed. Cover lightly and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350°, and line two cookie sheet pans with parchment paper. Taking the cookie dough out of the refrigerator, I use a medium cookie scoop to add 12 scoops to a cookie sheet pan and bake for 10-12 minutes. Mine were done at 11 minutes. They will be a little soft, but they firm up on the outside as they cool. I did get 2 full pans of cookies, but in the 3rd pan, I only got 8 scoops, and the last of the cookie dough at the bottom of the bowl did not have as many mint baking chips in it. So I just added some onto the top of each scoop before putting the cookies into the oven. It turned out to be a great idea since I used these for the photos of the cookies. You could certainly do this on the whole batch if you want to show off the green against the chocolate cookie. This recipe makes 2-½ dozen.
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