Chocolate Mint Cookies

Well, it has been a while since I blogged- almost a year! Work has been quite busy, but I felt inspired tonight, so here you go, a new blog post!! While I haven't been blogging for a while, I still have been trying new recipes and having fun in the kitchen. So hopefully I will make a few of the new recipes again and post them soon. :-)

One of the best avenues for trying new recipes this year as been my group meeting birthday tradition. Every time someone in my subgroup has a birthday, I ask them what they want and make it for group meeting that week. This past year I made: apple walnut cookies, almond cookies, peanut butter fudge, coffee muffins, banana nut muffins and raspberry/blueberry muffins just to name a few (can you tell we switched from a pm meeting to am meeting?) Well, it's been a full year and I'm back to the beginning with Shufeng. Shufeng really loves the birthday treat idea and actually picked this recipe for me to make. I was pretty skeptical since I am used to the creaming method for cookies and this recipe actually melts the butter, but the 600 positive reviews on allrecipies.com encouraged me to make them anyways (with a few tweaks of course). I have to say, I was quite impressed with how they turned out!! I would call them the grown up version of thin mints. :-)

Chocolate Mint Cookies

3/4 stick butter (6 tbsp)

3/4 C packed brown sugar

1 tbsp water

1 C semisweet chocolate chips

1 egg

1/8 tsp mint extract

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

5/8 tsp baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

18 Andees mints, broken in half

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan over low heat.

2. Stir in brown sugar and water until combined.

3. Add chocolate chips and stir until they begin to melt. Take off heat and stir until chips are completely melted.

4. Pour mixture into a mixing bowl and let stand at room temperature for 10 minutes to cool slightly.

5. Combine flour, salt and baking soda in a separate bowl.

6. Beat egg and mint extract into chocolate mixture on high speed.

7. Add dry ingredients and mix on low speed until combined.

8. Scrape dough down into center of bowl, cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

9. Preheat oven to 350.

10. Use a cookie scoop to portion dough into balls about 1 inch in diameter.

11. Bake for 8 minutes.

12. Place 1/2 Andees mint on each cookie and bake 1 more minute.

13. Swirl mint and then remove cookies from cookie sheet.

14. Cool to room temperature and then refrigerate briefly to set topping.

15. Enjoy!

Makes ~3 dozen