the best cookies. ever.

I never thought I was a big peppermint fan. That was always one of my sister's things. She loves peppermint ice cream. I do love mint chocoalte chip ice cream but the crunchy bits in my ice cream do nothing for me. OK, that's a lie. Just drooling as I think about Dairy Queen Heath Bar Blizzard.

A few weeks ago, I was in Williams-Sonoma. I love that store but try to stay away. Too many good things that I really don't need. I was there for peppermint dish soap. I know but I love that stuff and it's only available seasonally. And the fragrance makes me want to clean. It's worth any cost for that! I was wandering about loving all the gadgets and fantasizing about getting 2 of each. I saw the Peppermint Snow. It looked so cute in it's little jar. Six ounces for $10.50! I couldn't justify it for myself but I got a jar for my sister for Christmas. I didn't think much about it until last week.

Last week I saw a blog post about some peppermint crunch cookies. I wasn't hooked at first, it took a couple of days and Starbuck's Peppermint Cocoa to make me start to obsess about them. By Sunday, I knew I had to make those cookies.

I didn't remember seeing any of the Andes Peppermint Baking Bits at Publix or Target. But since I really hadn't been thinking about them, I might have just passed them by. I didn't find them at Publix. I didn't want to backtrack so I checked Williams-Sonoma next. Yes, their's is more expensive but at least it was on sale after Christmas. And I know their ingredients are natural, only cane sugar, corn syrup and peppermint oil. Tootsie does not list ingredients on their web site though they do note Peppermint Crunch Baking Bits contain soy and milk.

I knew that the Daily Loaf recipe used Martha Stewart's Double Chocolate Cookie recipe with modifications. Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats to Bake and to Share (Martha Stewart Living Magazine) does not contain this recipe so I search the site. It was easy enough to find and many more recipes I want to try.

I didn't refer back to the Daily Loaf recipe until after I had made my own batter. I made the assumption that they only change was adding the baking bits. Martha's recipe calls for 8 ounces of milk chocolate. Four ounces are melted and blended into the batter and the reamining four ounces is chopped up, the folded into the batter so their are chocolate chunks in the cookie. I didn't want the chunks to compete with the peppermint so I melted all the chocolate. Also, I had only semi-sweet chocolate instead of milk chocolate.

When it came time to add the peppermint snow, I started out with a half cup. I stirred it in and it practically disappeared. I added more until the whole 6 ounces was in the batter. This makes is an expensive cookie but it's seasonal. I'm OK with it.

Martha likes her cookies big. Really big. This recipe yields about 3 dozen cookies using a 1 1/2" scoop. I prefer smaller cookies so I can fool myself that I can eat more. I used my 1" scoop and got over 5 dozen cookies. I also adjusted the baking time to 12 minutes and allow the cookies to cookie to cool for about 10 minutes on the parchment lined cookie sheet.

These cookies are so good! They are crunch and chewy. They are like a brownie cookie. The pepermint is just right, not over powering at all. I am thinking of trying the same cookie with the Heath Bits O Brickle.