Thin Is In...

I'm a little late in jumping on the bandwagon this year, but I didn't want the Girl Scout cookie season to pass by without acknowledging it in some way. Bloggers all over the internet have been coming up with creative ways to turn the famous cookies into other desserts, or to make cakes and cupcakes that call to mind the flavors of the various annual treats, as if the thrill of eating them straight out of the box is somehow insufficient, and I figured I would jump on the bandwagon as well.

As I've recently discussed, I crave salty snacks more than desserts, but even I can be counted on to pick up a box or two of Girl Scout cookies when my cousins come calling every year, selling them on behalf of their daughters. Since sweet treats tend to linger around my house until they go stale (well, at least they did before I moved in with Justin), I acquired the habit of keeping my Thin Mints in the freezer to extend their longevity while I waited for my transient cravings to emerge and motivate me to eat them. Besides, everyone knows that Thin Mints are at their best when they're cold and almost refreshing.

Since my Thin Mints were already taking up freezer space, I thought I would transform them into another frozen treat that would take advantage of them at their chilly best by turning them into a batch of ice cream. I'd seen the recipe on Serious Eats, my favorite food blog, and I couldn't get it out of my mind, so I finally relented and gave it a try.

Unfortunately, the product that resulted didn't quite live up to my imagination: the ice cream, which lacked any alcohol or other additives that help keep ice cream from freezing too hard, was like an impenetrable brick. I was concerned that this might happen from the moment I made the custard base, which set up to a dense, mouse-like consistency when I chilled it prior to churning. Instead of pouring it into the machine, I literally had to spoon chunks of it into the canister. It was not an auspicious beginning. 

The ice cream itself tasted fine, though it could have used a bit more mint flavor. Surprisingly, the bits of chopped Thin Mints that were swirled through the mixture at the last minute retained their pleasant crispness. I just didn't enough the chewy, stiff texture of the ice cream overall. At the end of the day, I would have rather satisfied my Girl Scout cookie craving by eating half a sleeve of unadorned Thin Mints, though I was glad to have tried this recipe's intriguing technique of infusing cookie crumbles in the cream for flavor. Hopefully, I'll be able to marry that technique with a different base to create some interesting flavor combinations in the future...

Chocolate Thin Mint Ice Cream

adapted from Serious Eats

6 egg yolks

1/2 c. sugar

3 tablespoons cocoa powder

3 c. half-and-half

28 Thin Mints (one box), divided

5 oz. dark chocolate, finely chopped

1/2 teaspoon salt

1. In a medium saucepan off heat, whisk together egg yolks and sugar until light in color and slightly thickened, 3 to 5 minutes. Whisk in cocoa powder until no lumps remain. Slowly add half and half, whisking constantly. Finely chop 10 Thin Mints (crumbs should be no larger than a pea) and stir into dairy.

2. Put saucepan on medium-low heat and cook, whisking frequently, until custard reaches 180°F on an instant read thermometer (custard should coat the back of a spoon but a swiped finger should leave a clean line). Remove custard from heat and stir in chocolate, then salt to taste.

3. When chocolate is fully melted and incorporated, transfer to an airtight container and chill overnight in refrigerator.

4. The next day, churn in an ice cream maker according to manufacturer's instructions. Roughly chop remaining Thin Mints; chunks should range from pea to nickle-sized. In the last minute of churn, add chopped Thin Mints. Return ice cream to container and chill in freezer for at least two hours before serving.

Minty Fresh...

After all the hasty, last-minute additions that I wedged into my Cookie Bonanza line-up at the last minute, I've been dedicating the weekend to the items that have been firmly ensconced on my agenda since the very beginning. Every year, I try to have something peppermint-flavored, particularly something chocolate and peppermint, because the flavor pairing is a Christmas classic. In fact, at last year's cookie exchange, virtually everyone made a chocolate-peppermint flavored dessert in some sort of minty zeitgeist moment.

Ages and ages ago, I spotted these chocolate thumbprint cookies from Baked Explorations, the second book by the duo behind the New York bakery, Baked. I think it was last Christmas, actually. The only reason I didn't make them then was because I already had a thumbprint cookie in my line-up with a lemon poppy seed twist. So I held off making them all year, but never got around to workshopping them in advance of my holiday giveaway, mostly because I kept forgetting to buy the Andes Mints called for in the recipe. It's just as well -- those things are dangerous to have around the house!

I’ve made a few recipes from the first Baked book, which was a Valentine’s Day gift from Justin earlier this year, and once again, the boys from Baked have proven they really know their stuff -- the dough was a delight to work with. So many doughs for thumbprint cookies crack when  you go to make the indentations, but this dough was smooth and pliable. Not a single cracked cookie going into the oven! 

To save time, I made and shaped the dough earlier this week and froze it, pulling it out this weekend just to bake and fill them. They baked up perfectly, even though they had been frozen, and the white chocolate peppermint ganache went together quickly. I was struck by the attractiveness of the finished cookies as well; they may have been the prettiest cookie in my line-up this year. 

Aside from being exceptionally pretty, with their lovely contrast between dark chocolate cookie and creamy white filling, the cookies also tasted fantastic. Although my lemon poppy seed thumbprints were very well-received last year by the lemon aficionados in my life, and I enjoyed the double chocolate thumbprints I also made last year with their unique honey and vanilla bean ganache centers, I think these chocolate peppermint thumbprints may just be the ones I’ll return to in the future. 

Give these a try if you’re looking for a stand-out Christmas cookie this year, whether to wow your friends and family, or just to stand in front of the fridge shoveling them directly from the container into your mouth. These are perfect either way.

Chocolate Mint Thumbprints

adapted from Baked Explorations

For cookies:

2 oz. dark chocolate, chopped

2 oz. Andes mints, chopped

1 1/2 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 c. cocoa powder

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 c. unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/3 c. sugar

2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed

2 egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 c. sanding sugar, for rolling

For filling:

3 oz. good-quality white chocolate, chopped

3 tablespoons heavy cream

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

1. Melt the dark chocolate and mint chocolate together in a microwave or over a double boiler. Whisk until smooth, then set aside to cool.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, and salt. Set aside.

3. In the bowl of a standing mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the butter until creamy. Add the granulated and brown sugars and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the egg yolks and vanilla and beat again until combined. Scrape the chocolate into the mixer and beat just until incorporated. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl and add the flour mixture all at once. Beat on low speed, scraping the side of the bowl occasionally, until the dough is smooth. Transfer it to a sheet of plastic wrap and pat it into a disk; wrap and refrigerate it until it is chilled and firm, at least 30 minutes.

4. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Pour the coarse sugar into a shallow bowl.

5. With clean hands, form tablespoon-size dough balls, taking care that they have no lumps or cracks. Roll each ball in the coarse sugar and place it on a prepared baking sheet. Use your thumb or a small dowel to make an indentation in the center of the cookie. Bake for 10 minutes, remove the sheet from the oven, and use your thumb or the dowel to make the indentation more visible. Return the sheets to the oven and bake for another 4 to 5 minutes. (These are the type of cookies that can overbake very quickly—pull them out at the first signs of cracking.) Set the baking sheets on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes. Use a spatula to transfer the cookies to the rack to cool completely before filling them.

6. Place the white chocolate in a glass measuring cup with a pour spout. Put the cream in a microwave-safe bowl or cup and microwave it on high power until it boils, about 30 seconds. Pour the hot cream over the white chocolate and let stand for 30 seconds, then whisk until smooth. Stir in the peppermint extract. Fill the thumbprint cookies with the white chocolate ganache and refrigerate them until set, about 30 minutes.

Incense and Peppermints...

There is truly no rest for the wicked. After baking and cooking for two straight days to host a cookie exchange for my friends, I find myself closing out the weekend by gearing up for the flurry of baking that is my annual Cookie Bonanza giveaway. I've almost settled on a final lineup, and tonight it was time to get started on the cookies that can be baked in advance using my favorite technique of freezing portioned-out cookie dough to be baked when needed. Tonight's efforts were focused on peppermint chocolate chip cookies, a variation on standard chocolate chip cookies that uses peppermint bark instead of chocolate chips.

I first stumbled upon this concoction a few years ago, when Dad re-gifted a batch of his corporate gifts (presents sent from businessperson to businessperson around the holidays in an effort to keep their names in front of prospective clients, or as an additional thanks for services rendered) to me, as he is often wont to do with any food-related items. That particular year's assortment included a box of peppermint bark from Williams-Sonoma. Not being much of a candy eater (I'm much more often attracted to salty snacks when I'm in need of a nosh, and my Halloween candy almost always went bad before it got consumed when I was growing up), I found myself in search of alternative uses for peppermint bark, when I came across a suggestion in what was one of my then-favorite food blogs, 101 Cookbooks. That first year, I used the recipe listed on the blog, but the cookies it yielded were harder than bricks, and the author subsequently updated to a recipe she liked better herself. However, the idea for the cookies was a solid foundation; definitely an idea worth revisiting later.

When I discovered the joys of the New York Times chocolate chip cookie recipe (the subject of my first real post here at The State I Am In) about a year later, it was my natural inclination to consider using it to make the cookies if I came into the possession of more peppermint bark. As soon as Christmas rolled around, I diligently waited for a sale at Williams-Sonoma to pick up a box, and a batch of these cookies became a holiday tradition. They were included in my first Cookie Bonanza back in 2008, and in subsequent years, I began stocking up on peppermint bark on the day after Christmas, and freezing it until the next year. I also flirted with cheaper peppermint barks that didn't come from Williams-Sonoma, but were largely unsatisfied with the results. Less expensive brands seem to fall apart when broken into suitably small pieces for baking, but the dark and white chocolate layers of the Williams-Sonoma bark adhere quite nicely to one another.

These cookies are simple, and freeze gloriously, making them a welcome addition to my Christmas baking agenda this year. If you find yourself in the possession of a corporate gift, or some good homemade peppermint bark you're keen to dispose of, feel free to bake up a batch of these cookies; you definitely won't regret it.


Peppermint Chocolate Chip Cookies
adapted from the New York Times
17 oz. all-purpose flour
1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons coarse salt
2 1/2 sticks (1 1/4 cups) unsalted butter
10 oz. light brown sugar
8 oz granulated sugar
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons natural vanilla extract
1 1/4 pounds peppermint bark broken into small pieces (I tend to use 1 pound of bark and a 1/4 pound of regular chocolate chips, to avoid opening two boxes of peppermint bark)
1. Sift flours, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.
2. Using a mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together until very light, about 5 minutes. Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Stir in the vanilla. Reduce speed to low, add dry ingredients and mix until just combined, 5 to 10 seconds. Drop chocolate pieces in and incorporate them without breaking them. Press plastic wrap against dough and refrigerate for 24 to 36 hours. Dough may be used in batches, and can be refrigerated for up to 72 hours.
3. Portion out dough into 2 5/8 oz. balls on wax paper-lined baking sheet and freeze until needed. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 and thaw dough in the fridge prior to baking.
4. Place six dough balls on a parchment-lined baking sheet, and bake until golden brown but still soft, 16 to 20 minutes. Transfer sheet to a wire rack to cool.

Mission Accomplished...

For me, baking is a hobby. Some people golf, some people read, some people make arts and crafts, but what all hobbyists have in common is a craving to challenge themselves and have new experiences within their chosen avocation. Much as I enjoy baking unfussy, delicious cookies, I sometimes get struck by a whim to try something new and expand my skill set. These whims often result in overly ambitious projects, not all of which are successful. An attempt a couple years ago to turn my love of caramelized bananas into a banana upside-down cake was a resounding failure, for example.

When I was scouring my various baking books and magazines in search of cookie recipes to prepare this holiday season, I became completely smitten with a photo in Martha Stewart's Cookies: The Very Best Treats To Bake And Share (from which I seem to be drawing a lot of inspiration this year) of red and white striped, peppermint flavored meringue cookies sandwiched together with chocolate filling. They were spectacularly attractive, and I couldn't get them out of my mind. "What is wrong with me?" I wondered, "I don't even like meringues!" It didn't seem to matter that I didn't even want to eat them, I had never made meringues before and I was curious about whether I could do it or not.

I tried putting the cookies out of my mind, and was partially aided by some very negative reviews on the Martha Stewart website about the cookies' lack of longevity and people's woes in replicating Martha's results. I thought I had talked myself out of it completely when I found myself separating a boatload of eggs for a batch of spanakiropita I made over the weekend. I only needed the yolks, and the bowl of egg whites was sitting right there on the counter, taunting me. I'd already made Chocolate Peppermint Cookies and sugar cookies in the past 48 hours, but I figured, "What the heck?"

I whipped out the stand mixer, a double boiler, and the new cake decorating set that I got as an early Christmas present from Mom last week, and went to work. The egg whites didn't inflate quite as much as I thought they would, but they reached a state of stiff peaks, so I pressed forward. I made a huge mess attempting to paint stripes inside the piping bag using red food coloring, as per Martha's instructions -- she must think that people have child-size hands to accomplish this task. The piping itself (my first attempt in the past decade or so since I took a cake decorating workshop in elementary school) did not go so well at first, but once I figured out the necessary muscle movement, my success rate improved considerably.

You can really tell the difference between my first sheet of meringues on the left, and my more practiced set on the right. I ended up eating the worst rejects for "quality control" purposes.

After baking for nearly two hours at a low temperature in the oven, I thought I had been successful; the meringues seemed to have set, and they hadn't browned. I left them to cool completely, but when I went to remove them from the pan I discovered that they were still rather soft on the inside. I'm not sure what went wrong, other than perhaps oven temperature fluctuations (most ovens have a difficult time maintaining temperatures below 250 degrees.) I opted to try leaving them out overnight, hoping they would dry out further, which seemed to do the trick by morning.

The next night, I went to work creating the chocolate filling. Since my meringue-piping efforts had only produced about two-thirds of what Martha called for in the recipe, I made a corresponding amount of filling. Her instructions said to wait until the ganache could hold its shape before piping, but since I hadn't gotten home until after 10 o'clock that evening, I was short on time to wait for the filling to set up. I thought it was close enough when I started, but I was sorely mistaken. My attempt at getting the filling in the piping bag created an abysmal mess, with chocolate all over the counter and all over me. The ganache started running out of the piping bag as soon as I turned it over, because it was too fluid. I tried getting it on the flat surface of the meringues, but the filling just dripped off the edges. I ended up dipping the bottoms of the meringues in the chocolate that had pooled on the surface of the counter (the cool stone had brought the ganache to a better consistency), and sandwiching the cookies together that way. Still, even with the drippy chocolate, and the epic disaster I had created on the counter, the cookies were still gorgeous -- almost as pretty as Martha's.

As for the taste, the cookies proved to be somewhat of a revelation. Never have I had a meringue that I have enjoyed, but these might just make me a convert. They were crisp on the outside, marshmallow-y soft on the inside, with a big wallop of refreshing peppermint and a hint of chocolate, and they practically melted in your mouth. I brought the lion's share of the cookies to work the next day, where I hand-delivered them to a selection of my coworkers. Normally, when I bring cookies to work, I leave them anonymously in the break-room, but this time, after all the effort and all the mess, I wanted to see people's enjoyment first hand. Hands down, the best response came from Luciana, the administrative assistant to several of the museum's top executives, who is apparently a huge fan of meringues. She insisted on taking a picture of them, because they were so festive, and she ran down the hall to find other coworkers, because they just had to try some of my meringues. That's what baking is all about in my book -- making people's day with a little piece of love from the kitchen.

Peppermint Meringues With Chocolate Filling

adapted from Martha Stewart

3 large egg whites

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon peppermint extract

Red food coloring paste

4 oz. semisweet chocolate, finely chopped

2/3 cup heavy cream

1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper; secure corners with masking tape. Fit a pastry bag with a small open-star tip. Set aside.

2. Make meringues: Put egg whites and sugar in a glass bowl. Set bowl over a pan of simmering water, and stir gently until sugar has dissolved and mixture is warm to the touch, 2 to 3 minutes.

3. Transfer mixture to the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Mix on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. Mix in peppermint extract.

4. Using a new small paintbrush, paint 2 or 3 stripes of red food coloring inside the pastry bag. Fill bag with 1 to 2 cups meringue. Pipe small (3/4-inch-high) star shapes onto prepared baking sheets. Refill bag as necessary, adding food coloring each time.

5. Bake cookies until crisp but not brown, about 1 hour 40 minutes. Let cool completely on sheets on wire racks.

6. Meanwhile, make ganache: Heat cream in a small saucepan over medium-low heat until just simmering. Pour over chocolate in a small bowl. Let stand 5 minutes. Gently stir until smooth, about 5 minutes. Let ganache cool at room temperature, stirring every 5 to 10 minutes, until thick enough to hold its shape.

7. Fill a pastry bag fitted with a small plain round tip (such as Ateco #5) with ganache. Pipe a small amount onto bottom of 1 meringue. Sandwich with another. Repeat with remaining ganache and meringues. Transfer to wire racks; let set 30 minutes. Cookies can be stored in a single layer in airtight containers at room temperature up to 2 days.

Do The Peppermint Twist...

Persistence pays off. Three years ago, I was in my senior year of college, and I was invited to a holiday party, for which I was supposed to bring a dish. Naturally, my first thought was dessert, and I had recently spotted a festive recipe in an email from Martha Stewart for Chocolate Peppermint Cookies. The picture was tempting indeed -- puffy, deep, dark chocolate mounds studded with striped bits of broken peppermint candies. I was sold on the picture alone.

When I finished my attempt at the same recipe, it was clear that my cookies didn't even belong in the same universe as Martha's. I don't know what kind of food styling tricks her staff had employed when preparing the version for publication, but my cookies were wafer thin, mostly baked into a single blob from spreading far more than the recipe indicated, and the broken bits of candy had melted off the edges of the cookies and puddled around their edges. They were a hot mess. A tasty hot mess.

Tasty enough that I kept at the recipe, despite their homeliness. I made small modifications to my technique every time, and eventually I got them to a reasonably attractive state. The cookies eventually became a favorite of my best friend Katherine, and they have become somewhat of a tradition between us. I've baked them for her for her birthday, I brought them with me when I visited her in Atlanta, and I even paid $80 to overnight a batch to her in Japan as a Christmas gift when she was living there. This year, they are going into my annual Cookie Bonanza giveaway, so I fixed up a batch of the dough to freeze and have at the ready when the time comes, so I won't have to make all of the various cookie doughs all at the last minute.

Freezing cookie dough is one of my favorite baking tricks. I roll the dough into individually-sized balls as if I were going to bake them, place them on a wax paper-lined baking sheet, and freeze them until they are hard. Then, I transfer them to a plastic Ziploc bag and squeeze out as much air as possible, and return them to the freezer. I like to write the baking instructions on the bag, so I don't have to hunt down the recipe again when it's time to bake them. Although I'm going to bake off all of these at once, this technique is particularly useful for when a cookie craving strikes when you don't have the time or energy to make a whole batch. With dough in the freezer, you can just bake as many cookies as you are in the mood to eat, whenever you want some. In fact, it's a little dangerous sometimes...

I baked a few for quality control purposes (wink, wink). They're still not as pretty as the ones from Martha's kitchen, but they're much closer to looking good enough to eat than they once were.

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

adapted from Martha Stewart

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup Dutch-process cocoa powder*

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 oz. milk chocolate chips

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

3 large eggs

45 Starlight mints, coarsely crushed**

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl; set aside. Melt chocolate and butter in a glass measuring cup in the microwave, stirring every 20 seconds until smooth. Transfer butter and chocolate to bowl to mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add sugar, extracts, and eggs; mix on medium-low speed until combined. Reduce speed to low; mix in flour mixture. Stir in reserved third of the candies. Refrigerate dough until firm, about 30 minutes (or wrap in plastic and refrigerate overnight).

2. Using a 1 1/2-inch ice cream scoop, form mounds of dough; dip tops into remaining candies to coat. Place cookies, candy sides up, on baking sheets lined with parchment paper, spacing 2 inches apart. Bake cookies until just set, about 15 minutes. Let cool on sheets on wire racks. Cookies can be stored in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days.

* It's important to seek out and use the Dutch-process cocoa powder. I tried a multitude of substitutions when I first started making these cookies, but the Dutch-process cocoa powder is critical to producing even a moderately attractive product.

** I like to put the candies in a plastic bag and hit them with a hammer. It's a good stress reliever. I then separate out the larger pieces for dipping the cookies before baking, as these look more attractive. This usually amounts to about two-thirds of the crushed candy. The powdered candy and tiny fragments (about one-third) will go into the dough.