As a kid in Georgia, Alton Brown looked forward to one particular special delivery around the holidays: a box of swirly, chocolatey, pepperminty cookies. “I thought these cookies were literally magic,” says Brown, a Food Network personality (Good Eats, Iron Chef America, and Cutthroat Kitchen, among others) and author of Food for Thought, a book of personal essays published earlier this year. “My mom didn’t bake them, but we’d receive them in the mail every year, about a week before Christmas, from some distant cousin.”
In his late thirties, Alton recreated the cookies, which are a mash-up of candy cane–flecked sugar cookie dough and chocolate-laced dough. “I absolutely could not get my head around how these things came to be,” he says. “This cookie was my first exposure to mint flavor in cookies, a combination that’s become a lifelong obsession.” While these holiday beauties are perfect for gifting to neighbors and friends, it’s also understandable if you’d rather hoard them. “These are not the cookies I left for Santa. These I kept for myself, which may explain why I never got that jet pack.”
Chocolate Peppermint Pinwheel Cookies
Yield: 24 cookies
Ingredients
3 cups all-purpose flour
¾ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. kosher salt
16 tbsp. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 large egg, beaten, plus 1 large egg yolk, divided
1 tbsp. whole milk
3 oz. unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. peppermint extract
½ cup crushed candy canes or peppermint candies
Powdered sugar for rolling dough
Preparation
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. Place butter and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment and beat on medium speed until light in color, about 2 minutes. Add 1 egg and the milk, and beat to combine. With the mixer on low speed, gradually add the flour, and beat until the mixture pulls away from the side of the bowl. Divide the dough in half. To one half, add the chocolate and vanilla and incorporate with clean hands in the large mixing bowl. In a separate mixing bowl, add the egg yolk, peppermint extract, and crushed candy to the other half of the dough and incorporate with clean hands. Cover each dough half with plastic wrap and chill for 10 to 15 minutes.
After the dough rests, generously sprinkle your work surface with powdered sugar. Roll out each half separately to approximately ¼-inch thickness. Carefully place the peppermint dough on top of the chocolate and press together around the edges. Using parchment paper or a flexible cutting board underneath, roll the dough into a log. The log should be about 12 inches long. Wrap in parchment paper and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Heat oven to 375°F. Line a sheet pan with parchment paper and set aside. Remove dough from the fridge and, using a thin-bladed knife, cut into ½-inch slices. The dough may crack during cutting; just use your fingers to work it back together, and continue slicing. Place cookies 1 inch apart on the prepared pan and bake for 12 to 13 minutes, rotating pans halfway through cooking time. Remove from the oven and leave the cookies on the pan for 2 minutes, then move to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container for up to 1 week.
Share with loved ones and Santa (or not).
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