What’s your favorite holiday treat? If it’s a tie between chocolate-cookie sandwiches and peppermint bark, you’ll rejoice in this recipe from Martha Stewart’s newest cookbook.
To make Double-Chocolate Peppermint Cookies, which are featured in “Martha Stewart’s Cookie Perfection: 100+ Recipes to Take Your Sweet Treats to the Next Level” (Clarkson Potter; $26), you’ll need two sizes of fluted cookie cutters. The larger creates the cookie’s frame and the smaller shapes the hole or window holding crushed peppermint candies. Here’s how it’s done:
Double-Chocolate Peppermint Cookies
Makes about 2 dozen
Ingredients
¾ cup unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder
1/8 teaspoon coarse salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
¾ cup powdered sugar, sifted
1 large egg, room temperature
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
4 ounces milk chocolate, finely chopped
½ cup heavy cream
½ teaspoon peppermint extract
¼ cup peppermint candies, coarsely chopped or crushed
Directions
In a medium bowl, whisk flour, cocoa and salt.
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer set on medium high, beat butter with sugar until pale and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Beat in egg and vanilla. Gradually add flour mixture and mix on low to combine. Divide dough in half, shape into disks, and wrap each in plastic. Refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour.
Heat oven to 325 degrees. Working with one disk at a time (keep the other refrigerated), roll out on lightly floured parchment to a scant 1/8‑inch thickness. Cut out about 50 rounds with a 13/4‑inch fluted round cutter. Chill and reroll scraps (if dough becomes too soft, freeze for 15 minutes). Use a 1/2‑inch fluted round cutter to cut out the centers of half the rounds.
Arrange rounds on parchment-lined baking sheets, about 1 inch apart. Freeze until firm, 15 minutes. Brush off excess flour with a pastry brush.
Bake, rotating sheets halfway through, until edges of cookies are firm, 13 to 15 minutes. Transfer sheets to wire racks and let cool completely. (You can bake the small, plain cutout rounds separately for 6 to 8 minutes.)
Place chocolate in a heatproof bowl. Heat the cream in a small saucepan over medium-high until just bubbling around edges. Remove from heat and stir in peppermint extract. Pour mixture over chocolate; let stand 10 minutes, then stir until smooth. Let stand, stirring occasionally, until the chocolate mixture is firm enough to spread, about 30 minutes.
Spread 1 teaspoon filling on each uncut cookie; top with cut cookies. Sprinkle chopped candies in the window of each top cookie. Refrigerate until set, about 20 minutes. (Assembled cookies can be refrigerated in an airtight container up to 2 days.)
— Reprinted from “Martha Stewart’s Cookie Perfection” by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. (Clarkson Potter; $26)
