The 12 days of Christmas Cookies: Day 9 - After Eight Cookies

Geez, I really need to hurry up this week if I want to get this done before Christmas Eve, don't I? Sorry, but Office Christmas Parties, baking Christmas gift and stuff kind of got in the way. But I'll get it done, I promise. However, as I feared in the beginning: I'm short two types of cookies. But do not fear, I have other Christmasy food to show you on the last two days.

Today's cookies I've made for the past three years or so, usually due to popular request by others. Myself, I always find them a little underwhelming to be honest. Others seem to love them, though. In the three years I've made them, I've also never managed to make them look appealing. The first year, the chocolate kind of fell off. Last year, it was too thick and I had the worst trouble piping it. This year, I went for dipping the cookies in chocolate, but the food coloring really messed the chocolate up. Maybe that's why I don't like them as much, because it's not like they taste bad or anything. So if you're a master decorator (or even a mediocre decorator - you just need to be better at it than I am), you might be able to save them.



After Eight Cookies (a.k.a. "Chocolate Mint Cookies")


For the cookies:
80g After Eight (or any other mint-filled chocolate)
125g softened butter
50g powdered sugar
a pinch of salt
1 egg
250g all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tbsp dutch cocoa

For the decoration:
100g white chocolate


1. Chop up the After Eight into small pieces.

2. Mix the flour, baking powder and cocoa. Set aside.

3. Using a handheld mixer, cream the After Eight with the butter, powdered sugar and salt.

4. Add the egg and beat until the mix is nice and fluffy.

5. Slowly add the flour and continue working the dough until it's fairly homogenous.

6. Take it out of the bowl, cover it in clingwrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.

7. Preheat your oven to 160°C.

9. Roll out the dough to about half a centimetre thickness and cut out whatever shapes you like. (A word of caution, though: either you need to refrigerate the cut-out cookies for half an hour before baking or you should choose fairly simple shapes, since the dough tends to not keeps its form that well.)

10. Bake for about 12 minutes.

11. Melt the white chocolate in a bain-marie and either dip the cookies in it or pipe some swirls on top of the cookies.

Enjoy!
♥ Nicole