These cookies are actually Plan B use of remaining unadorned mint chocolate cookies from "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 4, Choco Unadorned/Coated Minty Cookies".
I had run out of melted chocolate after having coated only about
one-third of my 40 cookies. It wasn't until the third day that I thought
about gussying up uncoated ones. Hmmm, I didn't have spare frosting,
but had ingredients for buttercream frosting.
My buttercream frosting recipe called for 3 cups of powdered sugar and typical additional ingredients. "Vanilla Buttercream Frosting".
And rather than making pedestrian sandwich cookies, I added 7 drops of
blue food coloring to the frosting. Why blue? Eh, I didn't notice that
the cap was blue instead of green until I mixed up the frosting. Maybe
weirdly, the color looks more mint green than baby blue.
I had only 19 unadorned cookies remaining. I dispensed 1 T frosting
each for 10 cookies, mated them with 9 others. (I indulged and ate the
single cookie with excess frosting. Yum!) Yield: 9 ~3" diameter sandwich
cookies (each ~2 ounces, 255 calories), and one oddball (~ 190
calories)
Note: For future possible sandwich cookies from cake mix recipe that
yields 40 cookies, an entire 16-ounce can of spreadable frosting might be enough for 20 sandwiches.
How did I decide the amount of frosting per cooky sandwich? From
experimentation with these ~ 3" diameter unadorned cookies, I felt one
tablespoon of frosting filled in well.
This cooky recipe uses cake mix, eggs, oil, mint extract, and
chocolate chips. The ingredients and methodology are very similar to "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 3, Spearymintal Choco Chip Cookies". The biggest differences are the cake mix flavor and chocolate chip use.
I visited mostly video sites for melting chocolate and also methodology for coating the cookies. I bought a dipping tongs gadget. Some unknowns going in:
Cautions about melting process (temperature, durations, microwave vs. double boiler)
Number of cookies I'd get from my favorite cake mix cooky recipe
Tablespoon-and-spatula dispensing of dough vs. cooky press
Baking time—chocolate cookies not as easy to spot browning edges
Amount of chocolate for coating the cookies—enough vs. too much
The yield was 40 baked cookies. The 12 ounces of melted chocolate
chips was nowhere enough—only 12 cookies well-coated and 2 half-topped.
Why'd I so badly underestimate the amount of chocolate I needed?
My inexperience (clumsiness) with coating methodology and failure to revisit sites on baking day
Too-late thoughts about scraping excess chocolate back into bowl, resulting in overcloaked cookies
Fear of breaking cookies while coating, thus, handling them gingerly during dipping and transporting
1/3 to 3/8 cup of oil (I forgot that my standard recipe uses 1/3 cup. Results were acceptable.)
2 eggs
3/4 teaspoon of mint extract
Chocolate chips or other chocolate form for coating (Note: I
severely underestimated the amount of chocolate I needed. I managed to
coat only about 1/3 of the baked cookies.)
Dough Process (Using Pastry Blender or Electric Mixer for Combining)
For mixing this few-ingredients cooky dough, I used a manual pastry
blender. For parceling out the dough onto baking pan, I initially used
the method of measuring spoon and spatula, then switched to a cooky
press. A cooky press is fast if the dough is single-texture consistent.
It's not appropriate if the dough has chocolate chips, nuts, or other
items too big to fit through smallish disk holes.
Preheat the oven to 350.
Mix oil, eggs and mint extract in a large bowl. (Most of the times, I
usually break each egg separately into the bowl before adding the other
wet ingredients.)
Mix in the cake mix.
Parcel out tablespoons of dough onto pan, leaving ~1" margins for baking expansion.
Bake each batch for up to 7 minutes. (Because the dough is chocolate, checking for browning edges is not helpful.)
Cool for ~ 2 minutes before using cooky spatula to transfer them onto cooling rack(s).
Chocolate Coating Process
Set aside a large surface for this process. It's also helpful to
have a plate for resting dipping tongs, spoon, or fork for handling the
cookies.
Lay out parchment paper for laying chocolate-dipped cookies onto.
Melt chocolate chips or other chocolate forms in a medium bowl until syrupy.
Coat each cooky separately, lightly scraping excess chocolate before
transferring onto paper.
Carefully pull parchment sheet or partial sheets of coated cookies
onto rack or pan, and place inside fridge to cool and harden the
chocolate.
How long before melted chocolate sets? From "Chocolate-Dipped Cookies"—"Refrigerate
until the chocolate just sets, 10 to 15 minutes." From looking at my
camera's pic date stamps of cooky refrigeration and bringing them back
to the kitchen island, 40 minutes passed. (I probably did some other
task during that time.)
My profession had been technical writer/editor. Through TheWriteJob clublet (blog at http://thewritejob.blogspot.com), I have been exploring my inner creative writing, which includes mostly language enlightenment, entertainment, and a-muse-meant. Over time, I have become more active with images and my YouTube channel.
