Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread Cookies

These Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread Cookies are super festive and a delicious Christmas treat! Perfect for your holiday cookie plate!

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. 😉

Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread Cookies

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.

Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread Cookies

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!

Chocolate Peppermint Shortbread Cookies

★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

Yield: 24 Cookies
Category: Dessert
Method: Oven
Cuisine: American

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

1. Cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.

2. Add vanilla and mix until smooth.

3. Add flour and cocoa and mix until combined. Dough will be very thick.

4. Place dough on parchment paper and shape into a log.

5. Roll dough up into parchment paper and refrigerate for about an hour.

6. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare a cookie sheet by lining it with parchment paper or a non stick baking mat.

7. Slice dough into about 24 cookies that are about 1/4 inch thick.

8. Bake cookies for 9-11 minutes.

9. Allow cookies to cool completely on a cooling rack.

10. Melt chocolate in a bowl.

11. Pour chocolate into a piping bag with a small round tip (or into a ziplock bag with a corner cut off) and drizzle chocolate over cookies. Sprinkle peppermint baking chips onto chocolate as you go – chocolate dries quickly.

Enjoy!