My journey started out as intent to make chocolate-covered mint-flavored chocolate cookies. Such examples are Girl Scout Thin MInts, Hill Country Fare Fudge Mint Cookies, and Fudge Mint Cookies (Back to Nature brand).
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
What happened to the 26 unadorned cookies? Most of the remaining cookies wound up in my Plan B sandwich cookies that I didn't think of until three days later. Visit "Scent o' mintal Journey, Part 5, Choco Minty Sandwich Cookies" for details.
On to the cooky making!
Implements
- Pastry blender or electric mixer
- Bowls for mixing wet ingredients
- Bowl for mixing dough
- Rubber spatulas
- Cooky spatula
- Cooky pan(s)
- Cooling rack(s)
- Spoons
- Dipping tongs
- Parchment paper
- Measuring spoons
- Resting plate
Ingredients
- 1 box of chocolaty cake mix
- 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.)
Resources for Melting Chocolate and Dipping Items
- "Dipping Cookies, Pretzels, Cherries in Chocolate"
- "Dipping Cookies, Pretzels, Cherries in Chocolate Part-2"
- "How to melt chocolate in microwave : How to melt chocolate"
- "How to Melt Chocolate, the Right Way! - Kitchen Conundrums with Thomas Joseph"
This site provides corrective action if the chocolate misbehaves in the melting process.
Cooky Stats
Yield: 40 ~3" diameter unadorned cookies
12 fully coated (each ~2 ounces, 189 calories)
2 half-coated (each ~1 1/4 ounces, 129 calories)
26 unadorned (each ~2/3 ounce, 65 calories)
Note: I used a cooky spatula to divide the coated cookies.
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
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