White Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

White Chocolate Peppermint Cookies – (white chocolate peppermint cookies recipe and instructions follow) – If you know me at all by now, you know that I have kids. One of them being a two year old. Do any of you have a two year old in the house? If so, you are totally going to empathize with this. We put up our Christmas Tree a few days ago right, so, we started off with you know like a normal tree. Decorated from the bottom to the top. Like ya do, you know. Anyway, my very awesome two year old, Alicia, is fascinated with the tree, of course. And with the ornaments, of course. And especially with the candy canes – yes, of course. So, I hear myself say at least 20 times a day – “no, no, no, those are to look pretty, not to throw/eat” (depending on what she grabbed). Well, ten broken candy canes later…and several thrown ornaments (shatter proof, yay :D), I have re-decorated our tree. Yep, it’s naked from two year old reaching height down. It’s still pretty though – at least half way up and to the top. No, I take it back. The bottom is still pretty too. That’s only because we have one of those super dope white Christmas Trees- yes a fake tree, allergies. And, my husband always wanted a white tree growing up but his parents thought that they were ugly so he never got one – :(, sad, I know. What was my point? Oh, broken candy canes. So Tia, my four year old (being never discouraged) saw the pile of broken candy canes and her little face lit up and she said – “Oh Mommy, I have the best idea. We could make cookies out of the candy canes”. Great idea Tia. So, after a little adjustment to her original idea of candy cane marshmallow cookies – which probably would be good too. We decided to make white chocolate peppermint cookies. Oh yeah! And, they are super duper tasty. Happy Cooking everyone!

Ingredients
Dry Ingredients
2 cups AP flour (all purpose flour)
2 cups whole wheat flour *see note
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon Kosher salt

2 sticks (16 Tablespoons) butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup Splenda *see note 2
3 eggs
1 Tablespoon Vanilla
1 cup plain yogurt (I use fat free)

1/2 cup crushed candy canes (around 6 big ones)
2 cups white chocolate chips

Instructions
1. Bring all of the ingredients up to room temperature. At the very least, make sure the butter is room temperature.
2. In a small bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients. That’s the flours, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Stir them together.
3. In a large bowl (use you stand mixer if you have one because the dough gets very stiff ), cream the butter, brown sugar, and splenda. Scrape the bowl (sides and bottom) with a rubber spatula.
4. Add in the eggs and mix to combine. Scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula.
5. Add in the vanilla and mix to combine.
6. Add in half of the dry ingredients and mix to combine. Start on a low speed so that the dry ingredients don’t poof out at you in a big cloud. Also, only mix it until it is combined. You don’t want to over-mix your dough. It makes your cookies tough.
7. Add in the yogurt and mix to combine. Scrape the bowl. Make sure you get the bottom really well (sometimes the dry ingredients or clumps of butter like to hide down there and not mix in well).
8. Add the rest of the dry ingredients and mix to combine. The dough should be pretty stiff once you get the rest of the dry ingredients in there.
9. This is a good time to pre-heat your oven. I usually don’t do it at the beginning of the recipe only because I live in AZ and it makes the house hot. Plus, why waste all that electricity right? Oh, it needs to be 350°F.
10. Add in the white chocolate chips and the candy cane pieces. Mix the dough with a rubber spatula. Again, make sure that you are scraping the bottom of the bowl and the sides really well. Your going to get a good arm work out here because like I said, the dough should be pretty stiff. Stir it and fold it until you are sure that the chips and the candy cane pieces are mixed in nice and even.
11. Line your sheet pans (cookie sheets) with parchment paper (waxed paper). You can also use a silpat if you have one but they will cook a tiny bit faster on the silpat so watch them. Also, I highly recommend not skipping this step because the candy cane bits melt and they will stick to your pan like crazy and then you’ll be scrubbing pans which is not fun … at least to me.
12. Drop your dough onto the lined sheet pans about a Tablespoon at a time. They need to be around two inches apart. They don’t spread very much though (as long as you’re not making any changes to the recipe (like in the notes)).
13. Bake at 350°F for about 14-15 minutes until they are light golden brown.
14. Remove from the oven and allow the cookies to set on the pan for about one minute.
15. Transfer the cookies with the paper onto a cooling rack. So, basically, just carefully slide the whole paper off of the pan and onto the cooling rack.
16. Allow the cookies to cool before you take a bite. Trust me, you do not want to bite into a piece of hot molten candy cane. It will burn you for sure. It’s hot melted sugar – ouch!
17. Once they are cool enough to eat, eat ‘em, they’re yummy! Enjoy! Oh, also, I’m not exactly sure why, but these cookies taste better the next day, at least to me, kind of like spaghetti. Wait, they don’t taste like spaghetti, they just taste better the next day- like spaghetti does :) – Yeah, so enjoy!

*note 1 – You can replace the whole wheat flour with AP flour, but it will change the texture slightly and the cookies will spread more. You can help this by putting in 2 Tablespoons less of the plain yogurt.

*note 2 – You can replace the Splenda with white sugar. It shouldn’t change anything except your cookies may brown a little faster…..and the amount of calories of course. But go for it if you want to. :)