Double Choc Peppermint Cookies

Kinder has started here, so I spent the afternoon stocking up the freezer with easy bake cookie doughs.  I figured this will save me some time on days when we feel an after Kinder afternoon treat is in order.  I started off by making my ol' faithful milk chocolate chunk cookies,  and while I was kneading that dough I asked my girls what other kind of cookies they wanted me to make, they decided on choc mint, so I changed up the recipe and came up with these goodies.

What you need...

• 250 grams of butter
• 3/4 of a cup of Caster Sugar
• 3/4 of a cup of Brown Sugar
• 1 teaspoon of Vanilla paste
• 1 teaspoon peppermint essence 
• 1 Egg
• 1 and 3/4 Cups of Plain Flour 
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1 teaspoon of bi-carb soda
• 60 grams of cooking chocolate, either chips, buds or from a block roughly chopped up.

How you do it...

• First soften your butter, the easiest way to do this is to leave it out on your kitchen bench for an hour or so, but if you don't have the time, you can give it a quick zap it in the microwave, but be careful not to melt it.
  
  
  
  
• In a large bowl using a hand mixer or a mix master, cream the softened butter on medium speed with both sugars, the vanilla paste, peppermint and the egg until you get a nice smooth creamy consistency.
• In two batches add the flour, cocoa and baking soda, and mix well.
• Now mix in the chocolate, you can do so by hand mixing with a  wooden spoon, or be lazy like me and just throw in all in with the second batch of flour and let the mix master do the heavy lifting.
• Turn the dough out onto a well floured bench and give in a good knead.
• Roll it out into a long log, the amount of cookie dough you want to bake straight away gets  wrap in cling film and popped in the fridge for 20 minutes, this makes firm and easy to cut into disks for baking.  The rest of the dough can be cut into smaller logs, placed in a freezer bag, labelled and frozen. They take under an hour to de-frost so are also great to have when visitors pop over.
• When you are ready to bake, cut into cm slices and bake for 8 minutes on 190º C. Let them cool on a wire rack.
• Enjoy.
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