Chocolate Peppermint Crunch Cookie Recipe

I thought I'd share with you a new Christmas cookie I made this year. Here's the story behind it. Last year, I bought these Andes Peppermint Crunch baking chips. I added them into brownies and was not too thrilled with the result. It gave the brownies a rather odd mushy texture. I think I tried it in fudge too, and again it wasn't too good. I had one pack left and gave up on them for the year. Then this year, I thought of an idea. I thought it would taste good in a chocolate cookie. Cookies are denser than brownies and I thought the texture of the cookie would go better with the crunch of the peppermint chips. So I did a google search and saw this blog post on a chocolate peppermint cookie. I thought this idea would be perfect. So this is what I ended up doing for my cookies. I used the Nestle Double Chocolate Chunk recipes for the cookie part with a few additions.
First a pic of the end result to give you motivation. ;) I think these would look awesome on a nice Christmas cookie platter.

Ingredients:

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 3/4 cup Baking Cocoa (I use Hershey’s)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter or margarine, softened
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 2/3 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 1 package Andes Peppermint Crunch Chips
• 1 Candy Cane crushed (finely and coarsely crushed)
• ~1 cup white chocolate chips
• Christmas sprinkles

1) Preheat oven to 350F

2) Crush Candy Cane. I use the bottom of a ladle and a rolling pin to get it as fine as I can. Then sift the pieces through a mesh strainer in to a bowl to separate the fine pieces from the coarse ones. Mix dry ingredients (flour, salt, baking soda, cocoa powder and 1 TBSP finely crushed candy cane (the part in the bowl)).

3) Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla extract, mix until combined. 

4) Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix until uniform.

5) Add Andes Peppermint Crunch Chips.

6) Scoop out dough on to ungreased cookie sheet with a small cookie scoop.

7) Bake cookies @ 350F for about 9-11 minutes 

8) Melt white chocolate chips in a bowl in the microwave and drizzle over cookies. While the chocolate is still melted, top cookies with coarser pieces of candy cane and Christmas sprinkles. 

9) Let cookies cool and chocolate harden. Then enjoy!!!!!!! 

These are a new favorite around here, I think. I'll definitely be making these each Christmas now.  My Mother-in-law says they are "addicting." So one must exercise self control when you bake these. Haha! :)