Welcome to Mr. Farmer’s Daughter’s 12 Days of Cookies!
Many years ago my parents began a 12 Days of Christmas tradition with my sister and me. It began on the 13th of December and ran through Christmas day. It was so great to spread out the love (and gifts) for that period of time. So, I’m passing the tradition on to you in the form of cookie recipes! I’m going to keep the posts short because it’s Christmas time and I can’t be writing book-long posts for 12 days in a row. I just don’t have it in me to put that many words on paper. Suffice it to say, some of the recipes are favorites of ours, some I’ve adapted to be more allergen friendly and some are just recipes that I’ve wanted to play around with. All of them will be delicious though. Merry Christmas!!!
Day 9!
Cream Cheese Butter Mints!
Okay, okay. I know. This isn’t really a cookie but it’s a recipe that I love to make at Christmas and it adds variety to this blog post series so I’m choosing to leave it in here. Besides … it’s cream cheese. Who doesn’t love anything made of it?
If you’ve never made these, you’ll be crazy excited about how easy they are. Basically, they’re cream cheese frosting made really thick so when chilled it gets dried and firm. Like candies.
They’d make wonderful gifts to give in a pretty tin with cookies. They’ll fit right in.
A few notes:
• Always start with soft cream cheese and butter.
• Mix just until the mixture is getting thick. You’ll still need to be able to pipe it out of a pastry bag.
• Prepare a pan by sprinkling with cane sugar. Don’t use a coarse sugar for this. Fine grain sugar will be the prettiest and work the best.
• Pipe the mints onto the sugared pan and then, while still moist, sprinkle with more sugar. You’ll be able to save the leftover sugar once all the mints are removed from the pan.
• These keep best in the refrigerator but are so smooth and melty when room temperature, that’s the best way to serve them.
- 4 oz. cream cheese, softened
- 1 Tbls. butter, softened
- ½ tsp. peppermint extract
- 2½ - 3 cups 10x sugar
- Prepare your pan by sprinkling with sugar.
- Mix cream cheese and butter with a mixer until smooth. Add extract.
- Mix ½ cup of 10x sugar in at a time until mixture is thick but can still be piped through a pastry bag.
- Using a large star tip, pipe mints onto the sugared pan.
- Immediately sprinkle with more sugar and set in a cool place to dry.
- Serve at room temperature. Store in the refrigerator.