Candy Cane Cookies
An old recipe for candy cane shaped cookies flavored with almond & vanilla extract and dusted with crushed peppermint.
Servings 48 cookies
Cost 5
Ingredients
- 1 cup shortening or butter (190 grams shortening or 228 grams butter)
- 1 cup sifted confectioners' sugar (110 grams)
- 1 large egg (or 2-3 egg yolks if using butter)
- 1 ½ teaspoons almond extract
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon salt (reduce to ¼ teaspoon if using salted butter)
- 2 ½ cups all purpose flour (Gold Medal or Pillsbury bleached) (300 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.
Notes
I found it much easier to make the dough in two half batches and to add the food coloring before adding the flour/salt mixture.