Thin Mints

To start of baking day, it turns out I started with the most difficult recipe. In the end, everything worked out, but I will never make these again. Well, not like this anyway. They are really good, though, so if you want to see for yourself, give it a try.

Slim Mints modified from Chow:

Makes a lot of cookies

1 large egg yolk
½ tsp. peppermint oil
½ tsp. vanilla extract
1¾ c. all-purpose flour
1 c. powdered sugar
½ c. unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
¼ tsp. fine salt
½ c. unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small pieces
Chocolate chips
Canola oil

Place egg yolk, peppermint oil, and vanilla extract in a small bowl and whisk to break up the yolk.

Combine flour, sugar, cocoa powder, and salt in the bowl of a food processor fitted with a blade attachment and pulse a few times to aerate and break up any lumps. Add butter and pulse until the mixture looks like sand, about 25 1-second pulses. Add yolk mixture and pulse just until the dough forms into a ball, about 15 1-second pulses.

Turn dough out onto a clean work surface and roll into 2 logs, each about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. It was at this point that I knew something was wrong. It was still super powdery and not at all dough like. So back into the processor it went (well, not all of it. It was a bit messy for a bit) and I added in about 1/3 cup cold water until the powder turned into actual dough. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate until just firm but still pliable, about 1 hour. The logs will flatten slightly while chilling. Reshape the logs so they are perfectly round and refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour more. I know what they look like.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees (where it was at all baking day) and arrange a rack in the middle. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Remove a dough log from the refrigerator, remove the plastic wrap, and slice the dough into 1/8” coins. Place the cookies ½” apart on the prepared baking sheet. Rewrap the extra cookie dough in plastic and refrigerate until ready to bake the second batch. Bake the cookies until the edges are firm but the tops are still soft, about 9 to 11 minutes. Ours took closer to 13. Remove to a wire rack to cool completely. Repeat with the remaining dough.

 Their directions for dipping the cooled cookies into chocolate are ridiculously long and unnecessary. Corey melted some chocolate chips with a bit of canola oil over a double boiler and dipped the cookies in. We then put them in the fridge to cool.

These are tasty, but not worth the hassle. If I do something like this again, I’m going to use a basic chocolate cookie dough recipe, add in more mint (many weren’t very minty at all), and dip them in chocolate the way we did. Corey has a theory that the reason we had issues with this recipe is that the Girl Scouts don’t want us to know how to really make them. She might be right!