Chocolate mint cookies: A treat to bake with bored children

The language of food can be a minefield. To me, a cookie is a soft, slightly chewy and very moist biscuit. A biscuit tends to be drier and crumblier. This gets very confusing when talking to American students, who use “cookie” for all types of biscuit, but use “biscuit” to mean what in Ireland we would call a scone.

Even then, confusion reigns, as what our American friends call a scone is a rich, sweet, dense affair, usually triangular and topped with sugar. It definitely isn’t the light, crusty Irish scone/American biscuit you would want to top with jam and butter or cream.

Whatever you want to call them, these chocolate peppermint cookies are delicious. Chocolate can be domineering, smothering other flavours it is paired with. If you mix chocolate with a delicately flavoured fruit like strawberry, the taste of strawberry can get lost.

The peppermint in these cookies is such a punchy flavour that it will hold its own. In fact, if you use too much mint it can overpower the chocolate, which is no mean feat. These cookies have a great mixture of chocolate and mint flavours in each bite. Tiny versions of these cookies would be a lovely way to end a meal, alongside a good decaffeinated coffee.

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Full-sized cookies are a great mid-morning snack to break up the day while working from home. They are also delicious served with ice-cream for dessert.

Peppermint essence is usually easy to get in the supermarket, but if not available, use mint-flavoured dark chocolate as the chocolate chips (mixed with smarties for some extra colour).

I can’t say I would win honours in the home-schooling domain, but I believe in the value of life skills such as cooking and gardening in any curriculum, so get the kids to help make these.

CHOCOLATE PEPPERMINT COOKIES

Makes 10

Ingredients
100g butter, large pieces, at room temperature
110g soft brown sugar (or caster sugar)
1tsp peppermint essence
125g self-raising flour
20g unsweetened cocoa powder
60g good quality chocolate (chips, buttons or chunks)
1tbs cold water

Method
1. Preheat an oven to 170 degrees (fan), or equivalent. Grease and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

2. There are two ways to mix the dough: either use an electric hand whisk to first cream together the butter and sugar until pale. Add the peppermint essence, then sieve together the self-raising flour and cocoa powder and slowly blend them into the creamed butter and sugar. The second, quicker method, which I often use, is to treat the cookie dough ingredients (except the chocolate chips, which I add in at the end) like an all-in-one cake mix and just blitz all the ingredients in a food processor until they resemble breadcrumbs).

3. Stir in the chocolate chips and use clean hands to press the dough into balls, ensuring you distribute the chocolate chips evenly between rolled balls (add a dash of cold water if the mixture is very dry, although the heat of your hands will help to bring the dough together).

4. Measure one level tablespoonful of dough; roll dough between palms to form ping-pong-sized balls. Place on the lined baking sheet. Repeat with the remaining dough, spacing cookies wide apart as they tend to spread outwards during baking. Chill in the fridge for 10 minutes before baking.

5. Bake the cookies in the oven for about 10 minutes, by which time they will have spread and appear cracked all over the top.

6. Once the cookies are cooked, remove them from the oven. Since they will still be soft, allow them to sit for two minutes to harden up slightly, before using a palette knife to carefully lift them up and transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely.

Variation

For a different flavour to peppermint, add orange zest to the cookie.