Peppermint Mocha Cookies

One of my favorite coffee drinks is a peppermint mocha.  And, in my opinion, Starbucks has the best peppermint mochas!  Anyone have other favorite peppermint mochas?

I have a really good mocha chocolate chip cookie recipe, and I wanted to add a peppermint twist to it!  To be fair, these don’t taste exactly like a Starbucks peppermint mocha, but it is pretty clear that’s their flavor!

I used my mocha chocolate chip recipe as the basis, but changed a few things along the way.  For instance, I added 1/4 cup of baking cocoa, rather than a whole cup (by accident!) like I did the last time I made mocha cookies!

I purchased real peppermint extract for this recipe.  My mom and I were shopping together at the time, and we read the ingredients on the extract. It is literally peppermint leaves soaked in alcohol!  Every summer, peppermint plants sprout like mad in the creek beside our house. My parents have made vanilla extract for several years now, so perhaps it is time to attempt some peppermint extract! (Stay tuned for that adventure!)

I used crushed Andes mints rather than regular chocolate chips.  It added a big hit of peppermint that was definitely needed to get  the flavor I wanted!  If you are feeling ambitious, you could buy a bag of Andes mints and crush them yourself, but I was not about to unwrap all of those candies and smash them!  Maybe that is a job for a bad day…

I whisked together the dry ingredients (including half of the instant coffee granules), mixed up the wet ingredients, and then mixed in the dry ingredients gradually.  Pretty standard cookie stuff.

I only added 1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract because I did not want to overpower the chocolate and coffee flavors.   Feel free to add more peppermint extract if your taste buds tell you to!  But, as a word of caution, add the extract gradually!  (I ended up using 1/2 teaspoon later on to add a little more of a peppermint kick to them.)

I don’t make cookies very often (mainly because I would eat them all in one sitting with some coffee) but these have got to be in my top three favorite cookies to bake!

Do you have any favorite coffee drinks that you think would be tasty if translated into cookies?  Are there other variations of mocha chocolate chip cookies that you think sound delicious?  I would love your ideas!

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