Holiday Cookies | Chocolate Candy Cane

Trent recently finished two major projects that he has been working on for some time. (For one of them he made a chocolate bust of himself and ate it… oh art school… ) We hadn’t spent much time with him in the last few weeks. Little G got more than enough daddy time Tuesday when I was down-for-the-count too sick to function. He even indicated that he missed his mommy. That doesn’t happen… ever. When daddy is around, he is the star. And that’s okay by me. I get to be there for all of his firsts. I get all the cuddles when he wakes from his nap. It can be hard staying at home, taking care of a child, but there are plenty of moments that make up for it.

Monday I made ultimate chocolate cookies that I’ve blogged about before, but I wanted to put a holiday twist on it. Last year I tried to do that and it failed. After rolling these cookies, you coat them in sugar. I thought instead of sugar, what if I crunch up candy canes really finely and coat them in that. It didn’t work so well. They melted and were completely flat when I did this. So, instead, I chopped the candy canes up, but not quite so small, and incorporated it into the dough along with the chocolate chips. It was perfect. A little holiday flare to some fantastic chocolate cookies.
We took them to some friends of ours later that night. They have five children, so needless to say, the cookies were gone in no time. And we left their parents with five children on a sugar high, close to bed time. I’m certain we were their favourite friends that night.

Ingredients:

2 cups brown sugar

2 cups white sugar (granulated)

1 lb. real margarine or butter

5 extra large eggs

2 tsp. almond flavoring (1 tsp. if using real almond extract)

1 tsp. vanilla extract

Process:

Cream together above ingredients.

2 1/2 (12 oz.) packages milk chocolate chips

10 -ish candy canes, crushed (add to your liking)

Mix chocolate chips and candy canes into above mixture.

1 cup cocoa powder

6 ½ cups flour

2 tsp. baking soda

2 tsp. baking powder

Combine dry ingredients. Add to creamed mixture, mixing well. Scoop dough using an ice cream scoop. (I use one with a two inch diameter.) Pack well. Flatten dough slightly with hands. Put some granulated sugar in a bowl. Press formed cookie dough into granulated sugar to coat. Place on ungreased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 degrees for 7 minutes. (Oven temperatures vary; do not over bake. If cookies crack, you’re baking them too long. If you use a small scoop, bake for about 5 ½ to 6 minutes, but watch for cracking!) Remove cookie sheet to cooling rack.

This recipe makes 4 ½ to 5 dozen big cookies. Sometimes I form the cookies, freeze some of them on a cookie sheet without baking, then dump them into a Ziplock bag and freeze them for later. You can also bake them all and then freeze some. Or, just eat them all. Enjoy.