This recipe caught my eye because I had never seen a recipe for cooking with buttermints before! I rarely see them outside of a few old-fashioned restaurants but at one point they were a baby shower and wedding staple. They are chalky pastel mint pillows that melt in your mouth. I had a real craving for them early in the pandemic and made my own and even made this buttermint-inspired bundt cake but I never actually baked with them.
This recipe was pretty straightforward but I did see the need for some changes. I don’t think Philadelphia makes 3 oz bricks of cream cheese anymore. I remember them as a child but I don’t see that size listed for sale on their website. A lot of old recipes call for 3 oz bricks. Now cream cheese bricks (which are for baking and cooking and not to be confused with spreadable cream cheese in a tub) are only sold in 8 oz bricks. I didn’t want to make a massive batch of cookies so I used half of the brick. I think it is easier now to find a recipe that will call for 4 oz of cream cheese to use the rest on than it is to find a recipe that uses 5 oz.
The recipe also had you melting chocolate squares, cooling it, and then adding it to the batter. To me, that seemed like a fiddly step that could lead to disaster if the other ingredients ( or even the weather!) were slightly too cold. Melting chocolate and dirtying another pan is not, in my opinion, the best choice unless the goal is to drizzle or dip the cookie in said chocolate. Part of the appeal of a drop cookie is ease and cocoa is much easier to work with and distributes well in the dough with the other dry ingredients. The dough was sticky and rolling the dough around the cookies didn’t work as well as doing a dollop on the the pan and then inserting a mint.
I really wasn’t sure how these would turn out. Would the buttermint melt and run right out? Turn chewy or gooey? As it turned out, it maintained structural integrity. You get a bite of soft, moist dark chocolate cookie then there is a crunchy minty center. It was quite refreshing! If you are a York Peppermint Pattie fan, you will love these! My husband said they were some of the best cookies he’s ever had.
Chocolate Buttermint Cookies
Ingredients
- ½ cup butter, at room temperature
- 1 ½ cup light brown sugar
- 4 oz brick cream cheese, at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 egg, at room temperature
- ¼ cup Dutch process cocoa try using black cocoa for extra chocolate flavor
- 2 cups flour
- pinch salt
- ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ¾ cup buttermints also called party mints
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375. Line two baking sheets with parchment and set aside.
- In a large bowl or bowl of a stand mixer, beat together the butter, sugar, cream cheese, vanilla and egg until smooth.
- Beat in the dry ingredients until a thick, uniform batter forms.
- Drop about 1/2 tablespoon of dough on the line baking sheets 2 inches apart. Place a buttermint (or two, if they are small) in the center of each cookie and fold the dough over the mint to fully enclose it. Continue for remaining cookies.
- Bake for about 10 minutes or until they look firm and not shiny. Cool completely on wire racks.
updated and adapted from Linda Penzo’s Buttermint Tuck-Ins appearing in A Taste of the Everglades compiled by Everglades City School PTO 1994 Everglades City, Florida
