When I think of the holidays, I think of cookies…natural, right? I also think of snow and decorating a tree and of course, the holiday movies I grew up with. Dr. Seuss’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas happens to be one of my favorites. So I named these cookies after the Grinch himself!

I took them to a holiday party/reunion with all of my high school friends last year and they were gone so fast, I don’t even think I got to eat one 😦

Wet Ingredients:

2 sticks unsalted butter

1 1/2 cups granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. mint (or peppermint) extract

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

Dry Ingredients:

2 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. baking soda

12 oz. chocolate chunks

10-15 drops of green food coloring (or more…go crazy!)

8-10 peppermint candies

Instructions:

Cream together butter and sugar. Add the eggs, both extracts, and food coloring and blend.

Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add these to the creamed ingredients. Gently fold in the chocolate chunks.

Unwrap the peppermints and put them in a plastic zipper bag. Use a rolling pin (or something heavy) to (carefully) smash the candies to small pieces. Fold these into the cookie dough as well.

Cover the dough and refrigerate for at least an hour.

After at least an hour roll dough into ice cream scoop sized balls and place on a parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Cookies will not spread too much.

Bake at 350  for 10-11 minutes. Allow to cool on the baking sheet for at least 5 minutes and then transfer to a baking rack to cool completely

The best part is, if you’re craving something mint chocolatey and delicious but it’s not December yet, just don’t add the food coloring 😉