Candy Cane Cookies

Happy Friday, and welcome to another weekly installment of Christmas Cookies with myself and Laura! This week, E helped me tackle candy cane cookies. It's sort of like playing with Play-Doh, but with cookie dough instead. Also more delicious.

originally found here

Ingredients

1 box (or bag) sugar cookie mix
1/2 stick butter, melted
1 egg
1/3 cup softened cream cheese (which is 2 and 1/3 oz of a stick)
1/2 cup all-purpose flour, plus additional for surface
Red food coloring
1 1/2 teaspoons peppermint extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 325. In a bowl (I, as always, used my stand mixer), combine sugar cookie mix, melted butter, egg, cream cheese, and flour; mix together to form dough. 

 

 

 

 

2. Separate dough into 2 equal portions and place in 2 different bowls. I divided the dough then put one of the halves back in the stand mixer bowl.

 

3. Add red food coloring gradually to one bowl of dough, kneading together until desired shade of red is created. I kneaded the red dough in my stand mixer (with the dough hook attachment) to keep the red food coloring from getting all over the place.

 

 

 

4. Add peppermint extract to uncolored dough and knead together. (This was E's job.) 

 

 

5. On a floured work surface, takes small chunks of each dough, and roll into 1/4-inch-wide ropes (or "worms," as E so charmingly called them), each about 6 inches long. For each cookie, carefully twist  the red and white ropes of dough together and shape into a candy cane. 

 

 

 

 

6. Spread candy canes out on cookie sheets and bake on the top shelf of the oven for about 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool before serving.

 

 

can you guess which ones E made? :)

 

 

E had a lot of fun with this recipe, but it is NOT for the perfectionist. I had a hard time letting go of my need to make the candy canes look like candy canes and just having fun with it, but once I did, we had a blast. :) And then things got weird...

Once we got tired of making candy canes, we decided to use cookie cutters on the rest of the dough. The only cookie cutters I own are Star Wars (Yoda, R2D2, and Vader), however, so it looks like Santa is getting a candy cane, some nerd-dom, and a peppermint candy (or planet?) -shaped cookie for his snack this year. ;) It's okay, they're delicious no matter what form they take. 

Don't forget to check out I do deClaire for another Christmas cookie recipe! Looks like this week is mint themed! 

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