Love of Candy Canes

I love just about everything about Thanksgiving: the fall leaves, pumpkin decorations, harvest time, being thankful, eating off dinner plates with colors of amber, yellow, orange, and green.  This week I had to put up all the thanksgiving decorations...and the plates.  Can you tell I really loved the plates?  Oh, we have Christmas plates, but holly just doesn't seem to compare to the hues of Thanksgiving.

One thing I don't particularly like about Thanksgiving time is that everything is flavored like pumpkin.  Pumpkin lattes, pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies.  I could live my entire life without eating anything flavored like pumpkin. 

Now peppermint is where my true holiday favorite flavor is found.  Peppermint hot chocolate, peppermint chapstick, peppermint kisses.  Usually my house has mint tea too.

 

So, to jumpstart my Christmas cheer, I made peppermint cookies shaped like candy canes!  Now the fun part about this cookie recipe is that the peppermint flavoring can be substituted for the flavoring of your choice. Almond, citrus, and rum are just a few I have on hand. 

Background:
I got this recipe from my magical book of recipes.  Okay, basically that means that somewhere down the road my mom or I cut it off a box, printed it off, or found it in a magazine. 

Recipe:

1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 cup softened butter
3 oz. package of soft cream cheese
1 tsp. peppermint or favorite flavoring
2 egg yolks (reserve whites)
2 1/2 cups flour

In a large bowl, place sugar, butter, cream cheese, peppermint and egg yolks.  Beat until blended.  Then mix in flour.  Cover and refrigerate at least 2  hours or overnight.  On a well floured board roll out dough 1/4"-1/2" thick.  Cut out cookies with cookie cutters and place on cookie sheet.  Brush top of cookie with egg white sprinkle with colored sugar or leave plain for frosting later.  Heat oven to 375 degrees.  Bake for 7-10 minutes or until lightly brown on bottom.



Rating: [***]
Very peppermint-y, which was my goal.  They are a little crumbly, but I guess that's better than being hard.  They are definitely a cookie that shares the Christmas spirit, but not one that you would want to snack on all day long.  Plus the recipe makes plenty to share with all your friends and co-workers.

Change it up:
I ran out of time to decorate them how I wanted.  Here are some ideas I came up with.  Instead of using sprinkles you could crush up some peppermints to put on top, make it interesting by frosting them, or dip an end in chocolate because chocolate peppermint goodness is twice as good at just plain old peppermint goodness.

So share your Christmas spirit by baking these cookies for your friends!  And you non-peppermint lovers, remember you can change it up by using the flavor of your choice.  If you plan on making them citrus cookies, I would hold up until I make my citrus butter cookies.  They are to die for.