Chocolate Mint Cookies

Back in January, I noticed some dark chocolate and mint chips on clearance at the grocery store.  Apparently they were a holiday item.  Liking mint, and being that they were only seventy-five cents a bag, I bought out all they had left; about four bags.

On the back of the bag, was a recipe for chocolate mint cookies.  Sometime during the spring, I made a batch.  Oh my goodness, were they good!  So good that they didn't even last 24 hours.  Which was bad for someone trying to conquer the sugar monkey and lose weight.  I put the rest of the bags into storage, lol!

I sparingly used them in the last six months until they were gone. Or so I thought, until I found one remaining bag last week!  Chocolate mint cookies immediately started calling to the sugar monkey on my back.  *sigh*

I decided that perhaps making a batch and sending them off to DD1 at college might be a nice surprise, and something to cheer her up.  She's had a rough transition; homesickness hit her unexpectedly hard.  I would, of course, keep a few (very few) of the cookies at home--afterall, I can't very well make the house smell like cookies without DH and DD2 getting to eat at least one--and send the majority of the batch to her.

Thinking the dear readers of this little place here might be interested in trying these cookies for themselves, and knowing the holiday baking season will soon be upon us again (watch for these chips to come back to the store!  Or, you could use a different brand that is mint and available year round), I took pictures of the process so I could write a blog post about it.

Chocolate Mint Cookies
(recipe from the Nestle Dark Chocolate & Mint Morsels package, but I changed it to leave off all the name-brand flour, cocoa, etc.  Any flour or cocoa will work, obviously)

2 cups flour
2/3 cup cocoa
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs
1 bag (10 oz) Nestle dark chocolate & mint chips

Put your flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt in a mixing bowl.

Stir them together until they are uniform.

Then put your butter and sugars in another, larger mixing bowl.

Blend them together until they are creamed.

Then add your vanilla and eggs to this.

Stir until well blended.

Now, take your first bowl with the flour mixture, and gradually add it to the bowl with the butter mixture, stirring well.

This takes some time, and starts off really dry.  Don't despair!  Keep stirring!  It will all blend together eventually; it might take five minutes or so.

Once the flour mixture is all incorporated into the butter mixture, pour in the bag of chips.

Stir those in well also.

Now take a tablespoon to scoop out the dough.  Put the dough on an ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake at 325 degrees (yes, 325!!  I thought it was a typo the first time I read it, but they do cook at such a low temperature) for 11-13 minutes.  I usually go about 12 in my oven.

Remove from cookie sheet, and cool on a wire rack.

Try not to eat them all in one day!  ;0)