Day 7: Homemade Thin Mints

I was planning on making a Bundt cake today, but my friend implored me to make cookies. I'm not really sure why, as he lives over 2 hours away and won't be able to actually eat any, but I decided to please him anyway.

So today I made Homemade Thin Mints, a recipe found on The View from Great Island. Please read the recipe there, so you can understand my comments here.

The Cookie Ingredients

The Proccess (Comments)

If you use a hand mixer like I did, when you add the powdered sugar, and then the cocoa to your dough, mix it in by hand first before finishing mixing it with the mixer to prevent a powdery mess.

Make sure not to freeze the dough too much. I froze mine for about ten extra minutes, and it stuck to the plate I had it on and was as hard as a rock. I then had to let it thaw some,which made it probably not as stiff as when fresh from the freezer after the appropriate time. This may have caused the problems I had next.

I had a lot of problems rolling out the dough; it stuck horribly to the rolling pin, no matter what I did. I eventually gave up on this method and flattened the dough with my hand, which was considerably easier. The dough wasn't completely even, but I wasn't too picky.

Don't begin preheating the oven until now, or at least wait until after you've frozen the dough.

At first I used a shot glass with a 2" diameter as a cookie cutter, but I soon got lazy and ended up just rolling small spheres of dough, and squashing them down to approximately the same size.

The Chocolate Coating

By this point, I was pretty tired as I began the process pretty late. Instead of doing the entire amount the actual recipe calls for, I just did a small portion, in which I didn't really measure out the ingredients particularly, and just kinda eyed the amounts.

I do think I accidentally added a tad bit too much peppermint extract. It tasted akin to a Yorkshire patty.

I also used a double boiler instead of microwaving the chocolate as directed. The chocolate never got super liquidy though, which would make actually coating the entire cookie much harder.

With the smaller amount of chocolate plus it's thickness, I just spooned a dab onto the top of the cookies, as seen in the picture to the right.

The Final Product

Some Notes

I didn't particularly like the cookie that much. I think I might have accidentally used too much flour. But mainly the cookie just seemed bitter, which might have come from the fact that I only used 1 cup of loosely packed powdered sugar, whereas the cocoa was more densely packed.

The cookie is pretty crumbly.

I think the best part of the cookie that brings it all together is the chocolate topping. The cookie portion doesn't really stand alone by itself.

If I Could Do It Again....

I'd make sure I used a cup of densely packed powdered sugar.

I'd also pay more attention to the amount of time the dough spent in the freezer.

I think I'd try using the microwave technique described in the recipe. It seems easier, and might make the chocolate melt down a bit more.

The Final Verdict

This cookie was okay. I wasn't particularly in love with it, but I didn't hate it either.

The indifference mainly stems from the actual cookie part. It just wasn't all that great. I also don't think it was as dense as the normal thin mint inside. The chocolate coating brought the overall judgement to okay.

I actually liked my modification of only put the chocolate on top of the cookie. It made the cookie easier to make and not as messy to eat. If you're not bent on having an authentic Thin Mint, I'd suggest this change. (If you are bent on having an authentic Thin Mint, you may just want to hoard them the next time they're being sold; they freeze well anyway.) Next time, I would have spread it evenly over the top, to make it look a little nicer and a littler more recognizable.

I think instead of returning to this recipe in particular, if I wanted to make Thin Mints again, I'd look at another recipe, at least for the cookie part. There are quite a few floating around the internet.