Thin Minties

Occasionally, when attempting to organise my freezer, I will come across some forgotten bit of food. I'm good about keeping dates on things like meat products, so I don't usually find anything icky, but perhaps I will com across a roll of unsliced cookie dough or a baggie of frozen cupcakes. One other thing I find with regularity, once a year, is a forgotten package or two of Girl Scout cookies. This year, there were none for me to find because, though Girl Scouts is a wholesome organisation by all accounts, their cookies are full of not-so-wholesome trans fats. Yum. Struck by a sudden nostalgia for these, I decided to have a go at some similar cookies.
These cookies are inspired by the popular Thin Mint cookies. Thin mints are a crispy chocolate wafer covered in a mint flavored, chocolate-like shell. I opted to mint-flavor my cookies and forgo the chocolate coating. They don't use real chocolate anyway, as you can see from the ingredients. Make sure to bake these long enough, or they won't be crispy. It really repends on how thick you cut the cookies, so try baking a few as a test batch and letting them cool and crisp up before baking the rest. Mine were crunchy, chocolatey and had a nice hint of mint. They are slice and bake cookies, so the dough can be prepared in advance and left in the freezer. If you want to, drizzle a little melted chocolate over the tops of the cookies once they're cool.

Thin Minties

2 1/4 cups ap flour

1/4 cup cornstarch

6 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup white sugar

1/2 cup butter

1/3 cup milk (I used skim)

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

3/4 tsp peppermint extract

In a small bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, cocoa powder and salt.

In a large bowl, cream together butter and sugar. With the mixer on low speed, add in the milk and the extracts. Mixture will look curdled. Gradually, add in the flour mixture until fully incorporated.

Shape dough into two logs, about 1 1/2 inches (or about 4 cm) in diameter, wrap in plastic wrap and freeze for at least 1-2 hours, until dough is very firm.

Preheat oven to 375F before slicing your cookies.

Slice dough into rounds not more than 1/4 inch thick and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Cookies will not spread very much.

Bake at 375F for 13-15 minutes. Cookies should be crisp when they cool.

Drizzle with melted chocolate, if desired.

Makes 3 1/2-4 dozen thin cookies.

Reminders and Announcements:
Blogging By Mail 3 has just been anounced! This round is hosted by Cathy, of my little kitchen. Her theme of "Home for the Holidays" will have us all tucking some holiday favorites and the food sections from our local papers into our packages. The deadline for signups is October 23rd, so don't wait! Keep an eye out for the roundup of some of the goodies that were shipped out this round at the samantha files. If you haven't send Samantha a link to your post, please head over and do so!


And how could we forget SHF and IMBB this month?

• Lovescool is hosting a Dark Chocolate anniversary edition of Sugar High Friday.
• Kitchen Chick has the next Is My Blog Burning event all puffed up with her Souffle theme.

If you're worried about getting your egg whites just right, why don't you check out my Cooking School: How to Beat Egg Whites for a little more infomation and tips. You can even do a trial run with the very easy Overripe Banana Souffles.