Christmas Baking: Peppermint Swirls

I’ve been a bit silent with this Christmas baking but the next 2  days, I’ll get your mouth watering from desserts.  I promise you that.

I made myself start my Christmas baking on Saturday night with fun cute cookies called Peppermint Swirls.  Although you will see that when it comes to these cookies that need artistic touch, it doesn’t always turn out the way I want it to.  Next time I do it, it’ll be better. Still, I’d like to share them with you because despite them looking more like Peppermint Smushes, they tasted AMAZING!

I found this recipe in my Betty Crocker Christmas Cookbook.

PEPPERMINT SWIRLS

Makes 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup butter or margarine, softened

1/3 cup powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

1/4 tsp peppermint extract

1/4 tsp red food colour

2 tbsp granulated sugar

1. Heat oven to 350F.  In large bowl, beat butter, powdered sugar and vanilla with electric mixer on medium speed.  Stir in flour.  Divide dough in half.  Stir peppermint extract and food colour in 1 half.  Divide each colour of dough in half

2. Shape each piece of dough on generously floured surface into rope, 12 inches long.  Place 2 ropes, 1 red and 1 white, side by side, Twist ropes.  Repeat with remaining 2 pieces of dough.

3. Cut twisted ropes into 1/2 inch pieces: shape each into a ball.  On ungreased cookie sheet, place balls about 1 inch apart.  Flatten to about 1/4 inch thickness with greased bottom of glass dipped in granulated sugar.

4. Bake 7 to 9 minutes or until set.  Remove with cookie sheet to wire rack.

For this one, I chose to use butter.  Somehow my body is alright with that despite being lactose sensitive. Its also my first time using food colouring and peppermint extract.  The extract is the same as always but the red food colouring was the problem.  I had a hard time mixing with the dough so thats why we see a slight swirl of dough and red dough on the supposed to be red side.

Also, something to note is that if you do try this out, the dough will be a bit more crumb-ish. I had to knead the dough for maybe 5-10 minutes before they would become more like a complete piece of dough and still the side that wasn’t red was not as stuck together because it was drier.  Because of that, I had a hard time putting the ropes together and therefore, the results were more smushes than swirls.

This may not look too appealing, although after looking at it a few times, the “red” is a nice touch so it makes it look acceptable, the cookie itself is very good.  However, I covered the twisted red and normal dough piece in sugar on both sides before putting it in the oven and if you cover it with enough sugar, the taste combination is perfect.  You can smell a nice minty refreshing smell and taste mixed with sugar that melts in your mouth when you take the first bite.

This one is a bit more time consuming and if you are more skilled in the artistic decorative way in terms of baking, this one is a very good choice to make.

What do you think? Maybe someone else has done this with another recipe, what would make the dough a bit more like a dough to start off? Any ideas or suggestions?

Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, I promise you a lot more Christmas baking recipes coming up.  For now, I’ll leave you with this and head off to make my next batch.

Happy Christmas Eve’s Eve!