The holiday season is busy for everyone. Between gift shopping and cooking for
a village, it can be hard to find time to do it all. For this special festive edition of Chron Cooks, I’m going to share with you a few substitutions and additions that you can add to your go-to cookie recipes. Whether they be boxed or homemade, you can add a holiday spin to them without needing to learn an entirely new recipe.
Ingredients:
Your go-to cookie recipe (this can be any type of cookie – I did sugar cookies, choc- olate chip cookies and chocolate cookies)
Crushed candy canes and/or candy cane flavored Hershey’s Kisses
Instructions:
Blossoms:
The simplest way to elevate your recipes is by adding a Hershey’s Kisses blossom to the center of your cookies.
1. Press a candy-cane-flavored kiss into the cookie dough. Remove this kiss and save it before baking the cookies to create a divot.
2. Add the kiss back to the divot after the cookies have cooled off, and you’re done!
Peppermint Bark:
Another relatively easy method, though it’s a little trickier, is to make a peppermint bark for your cookies.
1. Using flavored Hershey’s Kisses, melt a handful (or more, depending on how many you make) in a bowl either on the stove or in the microwave until you have thick liquid chocolate.
2. Dip your cookies however you’d like. I did a coating around the edges, but you can fully coat the cookie, or just dip in half of it.
3. Set them aside on parchment paper until the coating hardens.
4. Optionally, you can also add crushed candy cane pieces to the bark to add a bit more texture.
Incorporation:
My last peppermint tip is to incorporate candy cane pieces and/or flavored kisses to your batter before baking.
Options:
1. Add crushed candy cane pieces (amount to your liking) to your batter the same way you would add chocolate chips, and stir until thoroughly incorporated.
2. Melt a handful of kisses and stir the mixture into your batter to get more of a peppermint flavor.
For one of my sugar cookie batches, I made both additions. I also made a batch of chocolate chip cookies that I added the candy cane pieces and marshmallows to, which might just be one of my new favorites!
