I recently tried some chocolate-covered mint chocolate cookies, Fudge Mint Cookies (Back to Nature brand), recommended by a friend. Mmmm. Got me to thinking about other minty chocolate cookies. I recalled my supermarket sells Hill Country Fare Fudge Mint Cookies. They're square, minty chocolate with chocolate coating. Decided to look up more similar cookies.
I thought I recalled that Girl Scouts has a minty cooky. Yes! Thin Mints, tersely described in "Meet the Cookies".
The Google results for "girl scout cookies mint chocolate" yielded not only a pointer to the Girl Scouts Thin Mints info, but also loads of pointers to DIY recipes.
All three brands of minty chocolatey cookies, besides sharing characteristics of minty cooky coated with chocolate icing, use peppermint oil. I wondered how that differed from peppermint extract.
Contrasting Peppermint Oil and Extract
"What Is the Difference Between Peppermint Oil & Peppermint Extract?" explains:
The fundamental difference is that peppermint oil is made of pure peppermint, while peppermint extract is essentially a flavored solution—a little peppermint and a lot of something else.
Peppermint oil is the pure, concentrated oil—known as an essential oil—derived from the stems and leaves of the peppermint plant. … An extract is a mixture of an essential oil and a medium—usually alcohol—that helps carry the flavor. … Never ingest pure peppermint oil, which can be toxic in large doses.
Hmm, my bottle of "McCormick® Pure Mint Extract" lists both spearmint and peppermint oils, along with water and 89% alcohol. Speaking of peppermint and spearmint, …
Contrasting Peppermint and Spearmint
From Taste of Home's "What’s the Difference Between Peppermint and Spearmint?":
Peppermint is an incredibly pungent—almost spicy—herb. … And though peppermint is perhaps the better known of the two, it’s actually a natural hybrid of spearmint and water mint. … much more potent than its counterpart. Because peppermint is a mix of two types of mint, it contains a higher content of menthol (40% as opposed to spearmint’s 0.5%).
From Chowhound's "What Is the Difference Between Spearmint and Peppermint?":
Spearmint, containing less than 1% menthol is the far more delicate with a subtly sweet profile, and thus often found in savory dishes; much less likely to overpower other herbs and spices. … peppermint is actually a hybrid of spearmint and water mint. At 40% menthol, it is the surly, punchy and powerful member of the Metha family, and the intensity of it’s “minty” flavor borders on spiciness, earning it a fitting name.
Both Taste of Home and Chowhound sites contain expansive explanations and also links to recipes that use either kind of mint.
Other Sweetish Scent o' Mintal Thoughts
My mind meandered to mint flavored sweets. Hmm, Junior Mints, Peppermint Patties, Andes Mint candies, grasshopper pie, mint chocolate chip ice cream, …
I also thought about articles I'd written that contained mint: Minty Choco Chip Pudding and Minty Choco Chip Cake Mix Cookies
My mind started percolating about another cooky recipe that would integrate yellow cake mix, mini chocolate chips, mint extract, and blue food coloring. This cooky should resemble mint chocolate chip ice cream. I needed to confidently determine the amount of extract and food coloring to use.
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 1, Sweetish Thoughts
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 2, Nose 4 Mints N Chips
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies
Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies
2 comments:
Thanks for the info and links. I grew up on the Gulf Coast and we always had a lot of mint plants which we used in ice tea and cooking but they're harder to grow in this hotter, non tropical climate.
YW! Hmm, don't think I've ever tried mint ice tea. I suppose I could try a drop in a glassful to see what it tastes like. I bet the tea tastes even colder!
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