Nov 30, 2011 I’m talking egg nog in my coffee and rum in my egg nog. A marathon of holiday movies and a playlist of five-hundred Christmas songs being played on a loop. Non stop. From the moment I wake up till the moment I go to bed. I’m surprised my Hindu (i.e. completely befuddled by this out-of-control Christmas thing) boyfriend has yet to “accidentally” drop my ipod in the toilet. All that to say, it is finally almost appropriate to start being publicly excited about Christmas. I think you should celebrate the first day of December by baking fudgy cookies with candy canes on top. Chewy and deeply chocolatey, studded with chunks of white chocolate and sprinkled with sparkly candy canes. There is a 99.5% chance that these cookies will become your new favourite. As with the recent Chocolate Snowball Cookies, chilling the dough is non-negotiable here. Any residual warmth from the melted chocolate will cause the butter to melt in the dough before it hits the oven and the cookies will spread to paper thin. No good. Do the chilling. You can chill too! Preferably with a rum-and-nogger. These cookies freeze beautifully, if you are organized enough to do your Christmas baking in advance…
Chocolate Candy Cane Cookies
1/3 cup butter 1/3 cup finely chopped unsweetened chocolate (2 oz/60 g) 1 cup sugar 2 eggs, lightly beaten 1 tsp vanilla extract 3/4 cup All Purpose Flour 1/4 cup cocoa 1 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 1/3 cup white chocolate chunks 3 candy canes, crushed
- In a microwaveable bowl, combine butter and unsweetened chocolate. Microwave on 50% power for 1 minute, stir, then microwave again in 30 second intervals until chocolate is mostly melted. Stir to melt the remaining chunks. Transfer to a large mixing bowl and stir in sugar, eggs and vanilla extract.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt. Sprinkle flour mixture over chocolate mixture and stir until well combined. Stir in white chocolate chunks. Refrigerate at least 2 hours, or overnight.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper. Drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls 2 to 3 inches apart. Bake 7 minutes, remove from oven and sprinkle with crushed candy canes. Return to oven 2-4 minutes longer, until edges are crackled and centres are just set. Remove and cool 5 minutes on baking sheet before transferring to wire racks to cool completely. YIELD: about 2 dozen cookies
