Chocolate Peppermint Sugar Cookies

I typically give stink eye to anything not home made at Christmas, but occasionally we all have to take short cuts.  I saw these sugar cookies, plain and awaiting decoration, in the store and, upon investigating the ingredients, didn't see anything too offensive.  I was supposed to be bringing cookies to pickle ball and decided to fix these up for the occasion.

I melted about 1/2 cup of milk chocolate and unsweetened chocolate together and spread that on the bottom of the cookies.  Then I frosted the tops with peppermint buttercream, sprinkled them with crushed peppermint candies and let that dry, then dragged stripes of chocolate across the top.  

I was worried about the frosting tasting like mouthwash, so I added the extract very slowly, 1/4 teaspoon at a time.  It was too mild, too mild, too mild... and then suddenly mouthwash.  Aaagh!  I frosted the cookies anyway and let them sit out overnight, hoping that would evaporate some of the mint flavor.  It did.  The next day, they were pleasantly minty and no mouthwash.  (I think there's an option for "mint" extract in the store that might be more mild than peppermint.)  The open air, plus being eaten with the cookie rather than off a spoon probably both contributed to the improved flavor.

I also discovered there's an art to getting chocolate just the right consistency to get a thin stream:  if it's too cool OR too warm, it clumps.  Weird.

After all that, pickle ball got rained out.  More cookies for me.

Frosting
1/4 cup butter, softened
5/8 teaspoon peppermint extract
1 cup powdered sugar
1-2 tablespoons heavy cream 

Cream together the butter and extract until light and fluffy. Slowly beat in the powdered sugar until smooth and very fluffy.  Add in heavy cream, a little at a time, until the desired spreading consistency is achieved.

Conclusion:   These still tasted a little commercial (what is it they do to factory cookies to make them taste that way??), but overall they tasted good and I really liked how they looked.  They were fairly large cookies and were a bit too rich to eat one all at once, so I had to break mine in half whenever I indulged.