I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! Now that the big meal is behind us, we can officially start making Christmas cookies! I look forward to this moment all year long because the ritual of making cookies - filling the house with the aromas of sugar, butter, spice, and, of course, chocolate - and sharing these special morsels with loved ones, or to gift to others, is a big part of the holidays for me.
I'm so excited to be in my little kitchen baking cookies for the holidays. Last year this time, we were living in a bit of a construction zone as we renovated our kitchen. Because of that, there was very little in the way of homemade cookies, or any cooking or baking in general, and I missed it dearly.
It aways seems like there's so little time to make, eat, and share cookies during the holiday season so let's start early and savor it the best we can. My agenda's pretty full with a few family favorites that I have to make but I also like to fit in a few new (to me) recipes. So I started by making these chocolate peppermint cookies, which are delightfully soft and chewy on the inside while a coating of granulated sugar on them a light crunch on the outside.
These cookies are based on The Sweet and Simple Kitchen's chocolate espresso sugar cookie recipe. I love the texture combination of a chewy interior and crackly exterior but as good as espresso sounds, I wanted to go for with peppermint flavor for the holidays (very much like these cookies). I went fairly easy on the peppermint so that in the end, you have a soft and chewy chocolate sugar cookie with a cooling peppermint effect in your mouth.
