These Candy Cane Cookies are from an old Betty Crocker recipe, and I might never have tried them had it not been for Sue. She mentioned having fond memories of them, so we went back and found the original recipe in The Betty Crocker Cooky Book. Both of us made a batch with very different outcomes.
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Shortening
Candy Cane Cookies are old timey cookies made with shortening. There's probably a way to make them with butter, but I wanted to try Betty's classic, which calls for 1 cup of Grandma's favorite fat. Crisco has been tasting "off" to me for the past 2 years so I used Spectrum and it worked perfectly. The dough didn't spread and the cookies had a nice flavor. Sue used Crisco and didn't get the same results. The dough was workable, but the flavor was terrible.
Anyhow, the Spectrum shortening worked well. The candy cane cookie dough has both vanilla and almond extract, then you sprinkle the baked cookies with crushed peppermint so they have an interesting mix of flavors and aren't super strong on peppermint.
Making and Shaping
The downside to these cookies is that making them can be a mess because you have to color half of the dough red. I used my favorite red food coloring, Super Red, and wore disposable gloves to work it into the dough. Once it came time to make red dough worms, I was able to form them without the gloves and the red didn't rub off onto my hands.
These cookies would be a fun project for kids on Christmas. I plan to make them again for sure and hope Sue does too! I do think it would be fun to try an all-butter version at some point as well. Thanks to Sue for this recipe.
Recipe
Candy Cane Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 cup shortening (Spectrum) (190 grams)
- 1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar (110 grams)
- 1 large egg
- 1 ½ teaspoons almond extract
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour (Gold Medal or Pillsbury bleached) (255 grams)
- 1 teaspoon red food coloring or as needed
- ½ cup crushed peppermint candy
- sugar (book said ½ cup, I used about a tablespoon)
- bits of chopped chocolate (optional)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Have ready two baking sheets lined with parchment paper.
- Beat together the shortening and sugar just until blended, then beat in the egg and extracts until blended. Mix together the flour and salt then add to batter and stir to make a soft dough. You should have about 22 oz.
- Divide dough in half and add red food coloring to one half. Work it in to make a red dough. Good luck! It helps to use food grade disposable gloves.**
- Pinch of teaspoon size pieces of each color dough. Working with one piece at a time, roll into 4 inch worms so that you have a white worm and a red worm. Put them next to each other snuggly, then twist. Carefully turn the top down to make it look like a cane.
- For best results, make cookies one at a time. If you attempt to roll 48 strips of one color and 48 strips of another, the dough gets a bit dry and breaks during shaping. You'll have to hone your own method for this, but it's kind of fun.
- Arrange the beautiful candy cane shaped cookies on parchment lined trays and bake for about 9 minutes or however long it takes for the cookies to be set. While they are still warm, sprinkle with a mixture of crushed peppermint candy and sugar.
- Note: For the peppermint, the original recipe says to mix ½ cup crushed peppermint with ½ cup sugar. I used the ½ cup crushed peppermint but added only about a tablespoon of sugar and a few teaspoons of tiny chocolate shards that I had left from another project.
Sue K says
Wow! Your cookies look fantastic! I don’t know when but I will try them again. Your tips are really helpful and I will definitely try with Spectrum because the cookies I made with Crisco tasted awful.