Better than Mint Oreos

I’m a sucker for anything with chocolate and mint. A good friend of mine gave me two cartons of chocolate-mint ice cream for my birthday, and my sister gave me several varieties of cookies in the same flavor. They both know me well. But my mint Oreos ran out too soon. I had to make a special treat for a gathering of friends, and for my brother’s birthday, so I decided to try something new involving my favorite flavors.

I started with a bag of chocolate chips and used the recipe on the back. Let me say here that most chocolate chip cookie recipes are pretty much the same. But there is one key thing to do to make them turn out well. Last year, my third-grade daughter did her science fair project on different types of fat used in baking. With five packaged cookie dough mixes, she tried using butter, margarine, soft-spread, shortening, and oil. Then she had her classmates rank them by appearance, taste, texture, and so on. By the vote of her fellow third-graders, the margarine cookies won. That was quite a surprise. By my own judgment though, the butter cookies tasted the best, but the shortening cookies were the prettiest. Since then I go half-and-half on the fat. They turn out perfect every time. Guess I won’t complain about helping my kids with the annual science fair—I actually learned something useful that time.

So here is my adapted recipe, courtesy of Hershey’s:
2 ¼ c. flour
1 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
½ c. butter
½ c. shortening
¾ c. sugar
¾ c. brown sugar
1 t. vanilla extract
2 eggs
2 c. chocolate chips

To this I added
1/3 c. cocoa
½ t. mint extract

Mix well, drop by small rounded spoonfuls onto cookie sheet, and bake 8-10 minutes at 350.

While they are baking, mix up a batch of cream cheese frosting (see Orange Rolls post http://intuitivehomemaking.blogspot.com/2009/11/orange-rolls.html), add ¼-½ t. mint extract (it's strong stuff) and some green food coloring. When the cookies are cool, spread frosting on the backside of one cookie and sandwich with a second cookie. If the cookies are still warm, it will melt the frosting and they’ll run all over (yep, I tried that and had to put them in the fridge to salvage them).

Just make sure you save enough for your family before you fill your party platter. I didn’t have any leftovers to take home.

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