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These Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread Cookies are a super festive and delicious Christmas treat! They’re perfect for your holiday cookie plate!
Want another delicious peppermint dessert? You’ll fall in love with my Peppermint Pretzel Crunch!
So my small group did the sweetest thing Wednesday night – they threw me a little surprise 30th celebration! I was told it was our Christmas get together, but instead we had cake, balloons and champagne. 🙂
Not knowing what they were planning though, I suggested doing White Elephant last weekend and sent out an email about it. It ended up kind of funny because the hubs was trying to have it be about my birthday, rather than Christmas, and of course I unknowingly messed that up. Whoops!
I have to say the gift exchange was pretty fun though. We had a $10 limit and I got a super cool remote control car. It lights up and pops wheelies and everything. We had fun playing with it at group and then took it home and chased Jessie around with it. Of course she was afraid of it – we are such good doggie parents. 😉
There was some delicious food and they made my favorite – Funfetti Cake! I took some home with me and had another big fat slice last night. Funfetti has made a number of appearances at my birthdays over the years. I love it!
I’m also loving these cookies. I don’t make as many cookies as I do cakes, but every time I do I want to make them more often. I love grabbing one and devouring it. They travel well, they’re quick and easy to grab. And honestly, they feel less guilty.
But we won’t go there.
I made what felt like a bajillion versions of these shortbread cookies. I tried regular granulated vs powdered sugar, regular cocoa vs dark cocoa, and I tried messing around with the amount of butter.
I definitely preferred the powdered sugar. It gave me a sweeter, slightly softer cookie even though it was the same amount of sugar.
You could go either way on the cocoa. I didn’t change the type of cocoa because they’d bake differently – they don’t. It was more of a flavor thing associated with the difference in sugar. The bitterness of the dark cocoa came through a lot more with granulated sugar, but it wasn’t as harsh with powdered sugar. Sweeter. Yummier. You can use either kind of cocoa – just go with powdered sugar.
As for butter, too much butter makes these cookies too soft and not very shortbread-y.
So the final result is sweet, soft and delicious! Not everyone is super into peppermint, so the recipe shows using either vanilla or peppermint extract. If you go with the vanilla, the only peppermint flavor will be the baking chips (so festive!) and therefore not very strong. If you want a strong peppermint flavor, add the peppermint extract.
Christmas is less than a week away (!!), so fortunately these are super easy to put together. Let’s get baking!
More Festive Recipes
Easy Peppermint Chocolate Thumbprint Cookies
Peppermint Cheesecake Brownie Trifle
Peppermint Espresso Brownie Cheesecake
Peppermint Pretzel Crunch
Peppermint Mocha Fudge
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 24 cookies
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Description
These Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread Cookies are a super festive and delicious Christmas treat! They’re perfect for your holiday cookie plate!
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 2 tsp vanilla extract (or peppermint extract)
- 1 3/4 cups flour
- 1/2 cup cocoa (I use Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa)
- 6 oz chocolate (I used chocolate candiquick)
- Peppermint Baking Chips
Instructions
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Cookie
- Calories: 171
- Sugar: 4.3 g
- Sodium: 4 mg
- Fat: 11.7 g
- Carbohydrates: 14.9 g
- Protein: 2.4 g
- Cholesterol: 20.5 mg
Enjoy!
Has anyone made these with peppermint extract instead of vanilla? Is it to pepperminty?
Or 1 tsp vanilla and 1 tsp peppermint??
Thank you
No one has shared about that, but I would probably use half vanilla and half peppermint.
Where I live, in Canada, powdered sugar refers to the sugar that one uses to make icing. Is that the type of sugar that is called for in this recipe?
Yes, that’s the type of icing.
I made these for the first time on Christmas Eve. These are delicious and I plan on making them until my Andes peppermint chocolates run out! I couldn’t find the peppermint baking chips so I chopped up the Andes peppermint mints & added crushed candy canes to top the melted chocolate – YUM!
I love your cake recipes & this cookie recipe is a home run!
Thank you!
Awesome! So glad to hear it! Thanks Heather!
Oh my goodness… I’m in heaven! I am so going to try these. I can’t wait to see how they turn out! Love meeting fellow bloggers like yourself.
I’m curious. The instructions are to roll the dough into a log, but the cookies pictured appear to be rectangular, not round. Did you shape the long into a rectangle before slicing?
It’s been a while, but I think they kind of naturally ended up with a side that straightened while sitting in the fridge, so I made them more rectangular. Feel free to make whatever shape you prefer.
Shortbread has always been my favorite type of cookie, but I was always afraid it was too complicated to make correctly. These looked so good (and simple), I wanted to make them for my church’s cookie exchange, so I took a leap of faith and made these last night as a “trial run”—-SUCCESS! Absolutely wonderful! I didn’t ice or decorate them yet, as I’m undecided as to using melted chocolate chips rather than candy melts or bark, but I just wanted to say “thanks”!! I’m making a second batch today! YaaaY!
Perfect for my church cookie exchange!! One question however: The recipe says peppermint baking chips, but the photos look like crushed peppermint candy such as candy canes, etc. How do you make baking chips look “crushed”?
These are the baking chips I used, but feel free to use crushed candy canes or something similar.
After you sliced them to 24 cookies, did you roll them over with a rolling pin to make them 1/4 inch thick?
Hi Dee! No, I sliced them to about 1/4 inch thick. Just eyeballed them.
It’s not everyday you find a good chocolate shortbread! This looks great! How sweet of your small group to throw you a surprise party!!
Happy Birthday! Though funfetti is wonderful (and very celebratory!) these chocolate shortbread are festive enough for any celebration! So pretty! Chocolate peppermint is a holiday favorite I would like to see all year. 🙂
What a wonderful surprise! Funfetti cake is the best! Also I have to say that these shortbread are absolutely perfect. I love the chocolate flavor.
Oh my gosh, these might be the best looking shortbread cookies I’ve seen this year!! Loooove the peppermint. The look so moist. Yum! And happy 30th! Why don’t we always do white elephants at birthday parties? Sounds fun to me 🙂
happy 30th 🙂 and yes, Ill take a plate full of shortbread please
Thanks Heather!
I want to come to your cookie exchange party if you give cool gifts like a remote control car!
<3<3<3 chocolate shortbread! These look so good!
Thanks Sharon! 🙂
Happy birthday, Lindsay! Welcome to the 30s. It’s a pretty awesome decade!
As a huge fan of your cakes, I can see why you bake them more. But your cookies are just as gorgeous! I can’t imagine walking by a plate of these and passing it up!
Thanks Mir! I’ve decided my 30s will be my best years yet! 🙂