Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

It’s a good thing these cookies are tasty, because they made me lose my F ‘ing marbles.

Normally I am able to do all my baking or baking prep over a weekend but because of the holiday schedule this year, it bled into part of the week. Since I planned on assembling goodie boxes on Tuesday night, I decided to prep as much as possible before then, since a lot of actual baking would be involved on Tuesday (to keep things as fresh as possible). So, I decided to make this dough on Monday night and refrigerate it.

Well, apparently that was much easier said than done. For one thing, trying to soften butter in my insanely cold apartment is nearly useless so even though I let the butter sit out all day I was at work, it was still a rock when I came home.  So, I put the butter on my stovetop (because it is also like 30 years old and randomly gives off heat even when it’s not on) where it softened relatively quickly and I got to cookie dough making. I had creamed the butter and sugars and was about 1/3 of the way done adding the cocoa/flour mixture when the bowl with said cocoa/flour mixture started flying through the air and I scrambled to save it in very dramatic fashion. Too bad it didn’t work. So there was cocoa and flour everywhere. On my clothes, on the floor, on the rug, the counter. I couldn’t even pick it up with a vacuum, it was so bad. And of course the entire batch had to be scrapped because I had no way of knowing how much flour actually made it into the wet ingredients. In case there is any question, this is not a fun experience to  have–ever–but it is certainly even less fun when it’s 10pm and you are already stressed about all you  have to do. Needless to say that whole “don’t go to bed angry” thing SO did not apply to me.

But, you know, I am a trooper so I decided to go ahead and make the whole shebang all over again the following night. Originally I wanted to replace some of the chips with mint chips but I’m glad I didn’t because the glaze gives enough mintiness, and I liked adding some crushed peppermints to the top for a more festive look.  I usually don’t get more cookies than a recipe should yield, but this time I did, getting just over 3 dozen (instead of 2). I think 2 dozen would make the cookies too big, especially for gift giving. These are a fun, festive cookie that taste similar to mint brownies. I’m not a savvy decorater and it was 11pm,  so these aren’t as pretty as I’d hoped but considering the circumstances, I’m okay with that 🙂

I’m submitting these over to Susan, the lovely FoodBlogga, for her Eat Christmas Cookies event. Be sure to change the constantly-updated round-up!