Browned Butter Andes Mint Cookies
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Because from Thanksgiving through New Year’s it’s pretty much socially acceptable to indulge in sweets at any point of the day. Coffee cake for breakfast? Of course. Afternoon snack of cookies and some hot chocolate? Heck yeah. Plus, it would just be rude if you didn’t at least take a few of the cookies your coworkers brought in. You’re just being a good corporate citizen. And best of all, it’s comfy sweater season so thoughts of bikinis and beaches are so far in the distant future that you can just sit back, tuck your sweatpants over your gut and relax. At least that’s my plan for the rest of the month … and winter.
Personally, I’ll take any excuse I can get to bake some extra cookies this holiday. I usually partake in the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, but due to a user error in actually hitting “submit” on the entry form I missed the deadline to participate this year. Luckily I have lots of friends who love to not only eat cookies, but bake too. So I organized a holiday cookie swap with 14 lovely ladies that I know to ship a batch to someone they didn’t already know and receive another batch from another swap participant. I’ll be compiling all of the recipes in one post to share since we all love a good holiday cookie roundup.
For my cookies, I decided to bake up a new holiday recipe since I had my friend Caroline’s mom Jody as my recipient, and she’s a big fan of The Salted Cookie so I knew I had to really bake up something great. Luckily I had just received my new OXO On Illuminating Digital Hand Mixer as part of the Bake and Blending with OXO campaign. I can’t say enough about how much I love OXO products and have been a long-time loyalist, so I really enjoy participating in these campaigns and trying out their new products. As much as I love using my Kitchenaid Mixer for whipping up desserts, sometimes I just need a good hand mixer to combine cookie dough in a mixing bowl, especially when using melted or browned butter. So this was perfect timing to test out a new recipe idea I had – Browned Butter Andes Mint Cookies. I took my classic browned butter chocolate chip cookie base and incorporated in Andes Mint pieces for a minty and sweet holiday treat.
I’ve been back to a regular travel schedule for work lately, which means I am really limited as to when I have time to bake during daylight hours, so a lot of my baking happens later in the day or at night. The OXO On Illuminating Digital Hand Mixer has a soft glow LED headlight that illuminates the bowl as you mix, allowing you to monitor batter consistency and remains softly lit for safety as long as the mixer is on. I took the below shot baking about 9pm, and you can see for yourself how nicely lit the bowl is making it super easy to see the batter consistency. Before using the mixer I wasn’t sure how helpful a light would be on a mixer since the concept is new to me, but I can say with confidence that it as definitely a really useful feature, especially baking later at night.
Another feature I really liked was the soft-touch controls, which allow you to smoothly adjust mixing speed between six speeds from light mixing to heavy whipping. The grip was comfortable and it was really easy to use in a few different sizes of mixing bowls.
And my favorite part, easy cleanup! The button on the top of the mixer releases the beaters for super easy cleanup (licking the beaters of course) and the mixer doesn’t take up much storage space in my kitchen cabinet which is perfect for a city girl like myself (who hoards kitchen appliances).
So let’s talk about how amazing these cookies ended up turning out. My Browned Butter Toffee Chip Cookie is definitely my favorite browned butter cookie base that I’ve come up with to date. The corn starch in the batter especially helps keep a great soft and chewy consistency while not letting the cookie thin out and get too crispy with the melted butter.
In addition to the vanilla extract that the base recipe calls for, I added in one teaspoon of peppermint extract to really make sure the minty flavor was incorporated throughout the entire cookie. And before putting the cookies into the oven, I sprinkled a dash of leftover Andes Mint pieces on top of the cookie for some extra minty oomph and to make them look extra festive on any holiday dessert table.
Normally, I’m pretty good at limiting myself to just a bite of a cookie when I’m photographing them and then I package them up and ship them off to friends, or in this case to my cookie swap friend Jody. But I’m going to come clean here and admit that I ate 3 of these while taking the photos at 7am. I just chalked it up to extra quality control, but really these are that good. If you’re going to be making lots of cookies this holiday season for cookie gifts, these stay really well for a few days and hold up well if you’re shipping them out as well.
And most importantly, if you’re straddling the line between the naughty and nice list this year, leaving a tray of these Browned Butter Andes Mint cookies out with some ice cold milk will definitely have you on Santa’s good side come Christmas. Maybe he’ll even leave you an OXO mixer in your stocking!
Disclosure: This post is sponsored by OXO, but all opinions are my own.
Browned Butter Andes Mint Cookies
Yield: 30 cookies
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Total Time: 55 minutes
Ingredients:
- 1 cup butter
- 1 cup light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon peppermint extract
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 cups Andes Crème De Menthe Baking Chips (or 2 cups crushed up Andes Andes Crème De Menthe thins)
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 350ºF. Brown the butter in a medium saucepan over the stove and set aside to cool to room temperature.
- Cream together butter and sugars in a large bowl using a hand mixer. Add the egg, yolk, vanilla extract, and mix well until creamy. Scrape the sides of the bowl down with a spatula before incorporating the dry ingredients.
- Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt and baking soda. Slowly add to the wet mixture and beat on a low speed until it is well mixed together.
- Mix in the Andes Crème De Menthe Baking Chips until evenly distributed through the batter. Chill the dough for about half an hour in the fridge.
- On a sil-pat or parchment lined baking sheet, use the medium cookie scoop and place even-size balls of dough at least an inch apart. I fit 8 cookies per sheet to ensure plenty of space to spread.
- Bake at 350ºF for about 9 to 11 minutes, until the edges are lightly golden. Let the cookies sit on the cookie sheet for at least five minutes before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling.