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Monday, December 9, 2019

Double Chocolate Candy Cane Crackles -- One of My Family's Favorite Christmas Cookies


Our church held its annual cookie walk this weekend and I volunteered to bring a batch of a family favorite holiday cookie -- Double Chocolate Candy Cane Crackles. This cookie is a wonderful use for broken candy canes, or as in my case, for one of the many boxes of candy canes that I buy for pennies on clearance each year in early January. The recipe is a drop cookie one, so for the most part, very easy.

1 stick (1/2 cup) of butter, softened
1/3 cup firmly-packed brown sugar
1/3 cup white sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla flavoring
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1  1/4 cups all-purpose flour
4 - 5 ounces of candy canes or peppermint hard candies, crushed (about 2/3 to 3/4 cup crushed), divided 3/4 for cookie dough, 1/4 to top dough
1 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips, divided 2/3 cup, 1/3 cup
1 teaspoon vegetable shortening

Butter a large baking sheet. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream the butter and sugars. Beat in egg and vanilla. Stir in baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder until no lumps of cocoa powder remain.

Stir in flour, 2/3 cup of chocolate chips, and 3/4 cup of crushed candy canes.

Form dough into 1-inch balls and place 2 inches apart on prepared baking sheet. Flatten slightly. Sprinkle each flattened dough with a small amount of remaining crushed candy canes.

Bake for 9 to 12 minutes. Remove from baking sheet immediately and cool on racks. After cooled, trim or break off any cooked candy cane pieces to neaten up the edges of the cookies. 

In a microwaveable dish or cup, melt the remaining 1/3 cups of chocolate chips with the vegetable shortening in 10 to 15 second bursts, stirring in between. When chocolate is thoroughly melted, scoop into a snack-size baggie. Snip a tiny bit off of a corner of the baggie and drizzle melted chocolate onto the cooled cookies. (I place all of the cookies closely together on the wire rack over a clean baking sheet, tessellating the cookies as much as possible. When I drizzle the melted chocolate, I can do so over the entire match of cookies at once. Any chocolate drizzle that pools beneath the rack can be scraped up and remelted, adding to the baggie for continued piping.)

These cookies were a hit, I was told. I think anything that looks very chocolatey often is. There are definitely "prettier" holiday cookies. However, when it comes to taste, if you love mint and chocolate together, this is a winner.

Note: I bake on insulated baking sheets. If your oven runs hot, or you bake on darkened single sheets, make a test cookie for doneness on the cookie's bottom. Chocolate has a tendency to scorch, so your baking time should be set based on the doneness of the test cookie's underside.


9 comments:

  1. Oh my,they look good! Does the drizzled chocolate harden? I was going to try making some to send to family and wasn't sure I would need to add a layer of wax paper between them. When shipping cookies, I use an empty box from either wax paper, cling wrap, or aluminum foil - I wrap the box first with pretty Christmas paper and layer the cookies in side ways, prevents them from getting crushed. Anyways...sorry for the rambling.
    Have a great week!
    Shelby

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  2. Shelby,
    What a great idea! I am going to use that idea in the future. I never would have thought of that box being a perfect cookie container.
    Alice

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  3. I love mint and chocolate together, so these look very good. Yum!

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  4. Shelby's idea is a good one! If there's a way to clean out a Pringle's container, that would also be about the right size and shape--never tried it but I've thought about it.

    Lili, these look pretty and I'm sure they are tasty, knowing that they are a family favorite of yours. I agree, it does seem like people gravitate toward cookies with some form of chocolate in them. I have a bar cookie that I only make at this time of year. It's very choco-riffic (and looks harder to make than it really is!). It's the cookie most likely to bring oohs and ahhs from others.

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  5. Hi Shelby,
    The chocolate hardens, mostly, but not as much as the chocolate chips were originally. I added a sheet of waxed paper between the layers when I brought my cookies to our church.

    That is an excellent idea to use the long, narrow boxes from kitchen wrap. You could also use spray paint to conceal the original designs and labels on the boxes' exteriors, like I've been doing with paper shopping bags to make gift bags. Thank you so much for this idea!

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  6. They're really tasty, Live and Learn. I've got another mint and chocolate "recipe," this time even easier/less complicated. I'll type that up later today. Also, very, very good.

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  7. Hi Kris,
    I did something like what you suggested with Pringles cans last year. I reused a long, cylindrical tin in which tea had come packed for holding cookies. I chose a recipe and made my cookies to fit this particular tin and I think it looked really nice when done.

    Can you share your chocolate cookie recipe? Bar cookies are so easy, so this sounds like a good one!

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  8. Hi Lili--

    I googled it and found the recipe! I cut it into 36 triangular bars--this is a very rich recipe so smaller portion sizes are fine, and it stretches it further. It's basically a chocolate shortbread crust with a fudge layer with chocolate chips and nuts on top.

    https://www.hersheys.com/kitchens/en_us/recipes/fudgey-chocolate-cookie-bars.html

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  9. Those look good, Kris. Thanks for sharing the link. Do you use sweetened condensed milk in it or do you use some sort of substitute?

    ReplyDelete

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