Saturday, January 24, 2009

Hard Brown Sugar?~Andes Chocolate Mint Cookies

While living in Hawaii, I never had to deal with hard lumps of brown sugar. In Champaign, the air is pretty dry, so once I open a bag of brown sugar, within my next use of brown sugar there are dry lumps of sugar. I cannot use rocks of brown sugar in my baking, so I end up tossing the whole bag (or baking muffins with pockets of sugar).

But, this past Christmas season, I was introduced to Andes Chocolate Mint cookies! Another student in my department made these for a progressive dinner and I had to have the recipe! Not only do they taste great, I do not have to waste my brown sugar!

Andes Chocolate Mint Cookies

Ingredients:
¾ c. margarine
1 & 1/2 c. brown sugar
12 oz. chocolate chips (I used Nestle semi-sweet chocolate chips)
2 eggs
2-1/2 c. flour
1-1/4 t. baking soda
½ t. salt
2 T. water
2 (6 oz.) boxes Andes Candies

Melt margarine, brown sugar, and water together. Add chocolate chips and stir until melted. Cool mixture for 10 minutes. Beat in eggs with chocolate mixture and add remaining dry ingredients. Chill dough for at least one hour. Roll dough into approx. 1" balls and bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. After the cookies are removed from the oven (immediately) place ½ of an Andes candy on each cookie and after a few minutes, spread the chocolate around with the back of a spoon evenly over the cookie and add sprinkles.

If you slightly under-cook the cookies, or make them thicker, they have a chewy slight brownie consistency, which makes the uber delicious too!

These cookies are so simple to make and so delicious! I am not sure how they will hold up in warmer climates, but in colder climates, these cookies are great!
It's a pretty foolproof recipe. But we'll see just how foolproof they are. I emailed the recipe to my sister (that's the foolproof test) and she made it a few weeks ago. My sister also used Splenda's brown sugar, so we'll see how her cookies turned out.

8 comments:

K and S said...

can't you sift the sugar or use one of those terracotta pieces to keep the sugar soft? seems kind of wasteful to throw it out.

Anonymous said...

That's a neat idea to put the chocolate on top!

Diana said...

Oh yummy! I understand about the sugar. I have a lot of weird food things here from different weather than Hawaii. I often use the hard lumps in a crumble topping over fruit or something like that. The cookies sound really good. My friend made me chocolate cookies with Andes peppermint chips mixed in and they were amazing!

Chou said...

YUM! Did you know they sell Andes mint chips now? So good. :)

Anonymous said...

Oh by all means, get yourself a Brown Sugar Saver terra cotta disk. It's so sad to throw away brown sugar when it's so easy to make it soft again! :o)

Cindy H
Hard Brown Sugar?

genkitummy said...

Kat and Cindy-thanks for the suggestion about the terra cotta disks. I've seen them in stores but wasn't sure they worked.

Lori-yeah, Adding the chocolate on top was great. Oh and then what's even better was that Mike placed a scoop of mint chocolate chip ice cream in between two cookies. yummy!

Diana and Chou-I think I've seen Andes chips. Maybe I'll try to modify the recipe and add the chips inside the cookie too!

Anonymous said...

When your brown sugar gets hard put a slice of bread in the bag or container, the sugar will soften in a day or two. Take of the bread slice and toss it.

genkitummy said...

AZ-thanks for the tip! I'll try that next time.