Everyday Simple

It's Christmas time! What's Christmas without a lot of delicious baked goodies? The only problem - I can't bake. Really. I've burned so many cookies and cupcakes and I even have a problem with melting chocolate. It's bad. Luckily, these Christmas Peppermint Sugar Cookies are nice and easy. It took a few batches with some scorched chocolate and a lot of crispy cookies, but eventually, these little babies came out nice and perfect. 

Christmas Peppermint Sugar Cookies

*Click here for a printable version

Instead of baking sugar cookies from scratch, I bought ready-to-bake Pillsbury sugar cookie dough. I was serious when I said I couldn't bake. For this dough, all you have to do is pull the pieces apart and lay them 2" apart on your cookie pan. It was as easy as it could get, which is what I was looking for. 

If you're going with this type of dough, preheat your oven to 350 degrees, then bake your cookies for 11-12 minutes. I went with the least amount of time required in order to get a softer, chewier cookie. 

While your cookies are baking, unwrap four or five candy canes. You're going for little broken up candy cane pieces. I first used a ziploc bag and the bottom of a cup to mash them up, but - the bag broke on me and got candy cane powder all over the counter. So I transferred what I had left to a glass bowl and used the bottom of the cup to "grind" down the rest of the big pieces. I like to leave a few big pieces, though - nothing too chunky, but fun little pieces to sprinkle over the chocolate. 

While there's a few more minutes left on your cookies, start melting your white chocolate chips. Before I melt chocolate, I like to use 1/2-1 tbsp of vegetable oil (depending on how many chips I'm melting). It can thin out your white chocolate, so be sure you don't overdo it. It helps the chocolate melt smoothly and prevents me from burning the chocolate like I usually do. 

Some tips I've learned during my vast experience of melting/burning chocolate: Stir the vegetable oil and coat the white chocolate chips entirely before putting it in the microwave (you can melt the chocolate via the stovetop, but last time I did that I burned the chips... again). Microwave at 50% power for 30 second intervals. If you don't know how to set your microwave to 50% power, you can use the defrost setting instead. Also, after every 30 second interval, stir stir stir stir your chocolate. Once it starts to melt, keep stirring it until the chips melt into each other. Don't microwave the chocolate longer than necessary. 

Once your cookies are done, take them out of the oven and let them cool for 2 minutes on the pan before removing them to a cooling rack. Let the cookies cool until they are "firm" - i.e. they don't feel like they're so soft that they're going to fall apart when you pick them up. 

Once your cookies are firm, start dipping them in your white chocolate. I dipped about half of the cookies and then spread white chocolate over the entire top of the rest of the cookies. Once it's been dipped/smothered with white chocolate, lay the cookies on parchment paper and sprinkle your candy cane pieces over the white chocolate. Let the chocolate harden before you pull the cookies off of the parchment paper. 

And voila! You now have soft, chewy, white chocolate peppermint christmas sugar cookies!

These little babies are so delicious. And the peppermint gives them the perfect bit of crunch. Me and my friend, Ixchel, from The Weekly Make-up Challenge, made these earlier this week for a few friends. The next day, I made another whole batch for Danny and I to pass out to our neighbors. We kept a few for ourselves, though - I've been sneaking some all day. 

Also - quick tip: If you want your cookies to stay nice and soft and chewy, store them in an airtight container with a piece of bread. The sugar in the cookies will absorb the moisture from the bread and keep your cookies deliciously soft. 

Enjoy your Christmas Peppermint Sugar Cookies!

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