It’s that time of the year again…time for our Annual Holiday Cookie Exchange Night…only this time we are combining it with our Wine Evenings and so it goes forth as “Cookie Exchange & Wine Evening!” Yum, Yum, Yummers.
I wanted to try something new and adventurous and I think I found the right recipe – Candy Cane Cookies. Although this cookie takes work since you have to refrigerate the dough, take out small amounts at a time and work fast….it is worth it in the end. A sugar like cookie with a peppermint twist is my cookie contribution for this year’s Cookie Exchange!
Candy Cane Cookies
Author: Adapted from Martha Stewart
Recipe type: Cookies, christmas cookies, snacks.
Serves: 30
Ingredients
- ½ lb (1 cup) butter, softened
- 1 cup icing sugar, sifted
- 1 egg
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 tsp peppermint extract
- ¼ tsp salt
- 2½ cups all purpose flour, sifted
- Food colouring (red, green)
Instructions
- Cream butter & sugar until fluffy. Beat in egg, vanilla, peppermint, salt and flour.
- Divide dough into two. Stir food colouring into one half. If you are making green/white or red/white candy canes leave the other half uncoloured. If you are making red/green candy canes you will need to colour both halves of dough. Keep adding food colouring (and mixing well) until you reach desired colour. Wrap each section in saran wrap and refrigerate for at least 2 hours.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Take a small portion of each colour of dough out of the refrigerator. Pick a colour and get started!
- Take a teaspoon of dough and roll into a 4 inch long snake. Do the same with the other half of dough. You will need to work fairly quickly as the dough warms up in your hands and becomes harder to work with.
- Carefully twist the snakes together and bend into a candy cane shape. Place on parchment lined baking sheets. Continue on with the rest of the dough placing candy canes approximately 1 inch apart on baking sheets.
- Bake for 7-8 minutes or until just a hint of brown starts on bottom of cookie.
- Set baking sheets on racks to cool (cookies will be to delicate to handle otherwise). Once able to remove cookies place on cooling racks until completely cooled. Store in sealed container.
Notes
I crushed some candy canes and mixed with sugar. Just as cookies came out of the oven I sprinkled some of the crushed candy cane/sugar mix on a few of the cookies to see how they turned out. Jury gave them 2 thumbs up!