Christmas Goodies

I love Christmas. Most importantly - its the celebration of my Savior's birth. Another reason it is baking season! This week since I have been home from school, my mom and I have been baking. We send goodie boxes to friends and family especially those that are elderly and/or widowed that probably are not going to bake for themselves. This week we have made our traditional Christmas goodies of chocolate fudge, peanut butter fudge, sugar cookies, poppy seed roll, and nut roll. Last week Mom made Bourbon balls too.

Sugar Cookies. We make small thin sugar cookies instead of the usual thick cakey cookies.

This year I made a new cookie, Chocolate Mint Cookies. I hope they stick as a regular Christmas cookie. I found them on Allrecipes.com earlier this year when I was looking for something new to make for a school function. They were a success so I knew we needed to try them this year for Christmas. They bring memories of Girl Scout Thin Mints - YUM! For our Christmas baking, I doubled the recipe and made about 200 small cookies.

 Ingredients
3/4 cup butter
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
2 tablespoons water

2 cups semisweet chocolate chips

1 teaspoon mint extract

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 (4.5 ounce) packages chocolate covered thin mints

Directions                   

In a saucepan over medium heat, cook the sugar, butter and water, stirring occasionally until melted. Remove from heat, stir in the chocolate chips and mint extract until melted and set aside to cool for 10 minutes.

Pour the chocolate mixture into a large bowl, and beat in the eggs, one at a time. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt, stir into the chocolate mixture. Cover and refrigerate dough for at least 1 hour.               

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets. Roll cookie dough into walnut sized balls and place 2 inches apart onto the prepared cookie sheets.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, be careful not to over bake. When cookies come out of the oven, Press one mint wafer into the top of each cookie and let sit for 1 minute. When the mint is softened, swirl with the back of a spoon or toothpick to make a pattern with the green filling of the mint wafer. For smaller cookies, break mints in half.

Chocolate Mint Cookies!

Whats your favorite Christmas cookies? Others that are Christmas classics in our family are peanut butter kiss cookies, pitzzelles, and buck eyes.