February 10, 2009

Chocolate Mint Marvels

Does anyone ever read the airline magazines while flying? I flip through them occasionally — more often if the squirmy child in my lap has fallen asleep. On one flight a few years go, before I had children and actually had time to read some of it (I found more that caught my attention than I would have thought), a noticed a couple of cookie recipes that were featured. They looked really good. (I may have been hungry at the time.) For lack of anything else to write on, I grabbed the barf bag, scribbled them down and stuck it in my carry-on. When I got home, I moved it to my recipe binder and there it sat. For years.

A few months ago I was cleaning out my binder and came across my little airline souvenir. I copied the recipes into my OneNote, but I couldn’t part with the bag. I don’t want to say I was sentimental toward a barf bag, but I’d never had a recipe written on one before. It amused me. I finally tried one of the two recipes, which happened to be really good, and I stuck the barf bag back into my binder where it will stay.

I almost called these “barf bag cookies”, but thought that it may not sound very appetizing. I stuck with the title printed in the magazine. (You’re welcome.) These didn’t stick around long after I made them, which was probably a good thing because it turns out they’re a short-shelf-life cookie. They’re especially good warm, when the mint is still melty, but they do have a great, chewy texture once they’ve cooled. And the mint sets up, so you can stack them. I suppose you could use any chocolate cookie recipe and slap a mint on, but I liked this one because they flatten out nicely, making it easier to spread the mint around.

It didn’t occur to me until I was making these that I could have just taken the magazine with me. Or ripped the page out. Oh well. I like my barf bag better.

If you spread too much you won’t be able to see the green part of the mint. I liked seeing the streaks.

Chocolate Mint Marvels
From an airline magazine, copied onto a barf bag

3/4 c butter
1 1/2 c brown sugar
2 c chocolate chips
2 eggs
2 1/2 c flour
1 1/4 tsp baking soda
3-4 pkg Andes mints

Melt butter and brown sugar on low heat. Add chips and stir to melt. Put in bowl and let cool. Add eggs, mix in flour and baking soda. Chill dough for 1 hour. Bake at 350 for 9-14 minutes, or until edges become dry looking and tops are cracked. Remove from oven and place a mint on each — spread with a knife as mint melts.

Nat’s Notes:
1. When it says “chill dough for 1 hour” it doesn’t mean “stick the dough in the fridge and maybe you’ll get around to making these in the next couple of days”. I baked half of the dough after an hour of being chilled and left the rest for later, only to discover that the dough gets REALLY hard after being in the fridge several hours. It really means “1 hour”.
2. The first few mints melted easily, but it got harder as I progressed from cookie to cookie. Since my oven was still hot, I stuck the pan back in there (with the mints atop the cookies) for a couple of minutes. The mints melted and spread beautifully after that.
3. The original recipe said to bake them for 9 minutes. Mine weren’t even close to being done. I think I baked them for 13, so that’s why the baking window is so wide. Maybe I should check the temps in my oven….

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