Peppermint Candy Cane Cookies
These peppermint candy cane cookies are light, buttery, and look so fun for Christmas parties and cookie exchange trays.
Ingredients
Ingredients For The Cookie Dough
- 1 cup butter usalted, softened
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon peppermint extract
- 1 large egg
- 2 3/4 cups all purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
Ingredients For Decorating The Cookies
- red gel food coloring
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 2 teaspoons crushed candy canes Optional - to sprinkle on top of the cookies, About 2 candy canes crushed
Instructions
Making The Cookies Dough
- In a large bowl cream together softened butter, 1 cup granulated sugar and powdered sugar with an electric mixer until fully mixed. Add the egg, vanilla, and peppermint to the butter and sugar. Mix until these wet ingredients are fully mixed.
- In a separate mixing bowl mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients into the butter mixture. Mix well until a dough forms and all the dry ingredients are well mixed into the dough.
- Remove the dough with your hands onto a clean counter and roll the dough into a log shape. Cut the dough into two equal halves.
- In the middle of one half of the dough, add red gel food coloring. Gently knead it to mix the color in (see notes below.) Add more red gel food coloring as needed to make it a red color.
- Wrap each dough color in plastic wrap. Chill the dough for 30 minutes.
Twisting And Baking The Cookies
- Preheat the oven to 350. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or spray with cooking oil.
- Scoop out two teaspoons from the red dough and two teaspoons of the uncolored dough. Roll the red dough together into a ball. Roll the uncolored dough together into a ball.
- Roll each color of dough into long ropes with your hands until they are about six inches long. Twist the dough ropes together. Shape the twisted dough into a hook shape and place it onto a cookie sheet, about 9 per cookie sheet leaving space between the cookies. Repeat for each cookie.
- Bake cookies for 9-10 minutes.
- Sprinkle the warm cookies with granulated sugar while warm, then allow cookies to cool on cookie sheet for about two to three minutes. You can also optionally sprinkle the cookies with the crushed candy cane if desired. Place cookies on a wire rack or clean towel to finish cooling. Then eat and enjoy!
Notes
Mixing The Food Coloring Into the Dough
Food coloring can stain your hands, especially gel food coloring which is more concentrated in color.- Mixing the food coloring by hand- Add the color carefully to the middle of the dough and knead from the outside to the center to mix, similar to mixing bread dough. It is recommended to use plastic gloves to avoid staining your skin when mixing in food coloring.
- Mixing the food coloring with a mixer- You can also add the food coloring to the dough with an electric mixer. Place half the dough back in the bowl and mix carefully. Take care to only mix enough to mix in the color evenly. Overmixing the dough can cause the cookies to become tough.
Nutrition
Calories: 104kcal | Carbohydrates: 14g | Protein: 1g | Fat: 5g | Saturated Fat: 3g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 0.2g | Monounsaturated Fat: 1g | Trans Fat: 0.2g | Cholesterol: 18mg | Sodium: 82mg | Potassium: 13mg | Fiber: 0.2g | Sugar: 7g | Vitamin A: 156IU | Calcium: 10mg | Iron: 0.5mg