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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!
I used regular unsweetened cocoa powder, and used 1/2 tsp peppermint extract, 1/2 tsp coffee extract, and 1 tsp vanilla. Delicious, easy cookie dough! I love that it’s a slice and bake too!! I shaped dough into rectangular log before refrigerating. Texture and taste of these are perfect! This one is a keeper.
I’m so glad you enjoyed them!