This easy recipe for Chocolate Peppermint Sugar Cookies makes soft, tender and deeply chocolatey cookies. Decorate them with crushed candy cane pieces for the perfect holiday treat!
If you love chocolate cookies, you won't want to miss these Chocolate Walnut Cookies, they're so good!
I couldn't let the holiday season pass without sharing this easy and tasty recipe for chocolate sugar cookies.
These dark chocolate cookies are flavored with a touch of peppermint extract which gives them an extra burst of flavor and makes them especially suited for the holidays.
Made with cocoa powder, these cookies are seriously chocolatey and not overly sweet, which gives us room to decorate these cookies with extra chocolate, sprinkles and candy.
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How to Make Chocolate Sugar Cookies
The dough for these star-shaped Chocolate Peppermint Sugar Cookies is simple to make and really easy to work with.
Here's an overview of the ingredients and steps to making them. You can find ingredient amounts and step-by-step instructions in the recipe card at the end of the post.
Ingredients Overview
- Unsalted butter
- Sugar
- One egg
- Vanilla and peppermint extract
- All purpose-flour
- Cocoa: You can use dutch processed or regular cocoa in this recipe.
- Cornstarch and salt
- White chocolate chips: This is for the chocolate drizzle.
- Sprinkles and crushed peppermint candy canes. These are used to decorate the baked cookies and are optional.
Steps Overview
- Whisk dry ingredients together in a large bowl and set flour mixture aside.
- Beat butter and sugar in a mixer. Add in the egg, vanilla and peppermint extract, mix well.
- On low speed, slowly add in the dry ingredients. Blend the ingredients until the cookie dough comes together. Remove the dough from the mixer and divide it into two disks. Wrap each disk well with plastic wrap and refrigerate the dough for at least an hour before rolling out and cutting into shapes.
- Once chilled, remove one disk from the refrigerator. Preheat your oven and line two sheet pans with nonstick baking liners (silpat) or parchment paper.
- With a rolling pin, roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness. If the dough is sticky, dust your surface with a little bit of cocoa or flour.
- With a cookie cutter, cut as many shapes as you can and place the cookies on the baking sheet. Re-roll the remaining dough and cut out more cookies until all the dough is used.
- Bake in the oven for 8 minutes or until cookies look dry on top. Let cookies cool on the baking sheet for a few minutes before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely.
How to Decorate Sugar Cookies
Sugar cookies are so much fun for the holidays, I especially love the decorating part of making them. Getting sugar cookies to look pretty and festive is so easy with all the options available to us.
While you can use royal icing, I prefer to decorate mine by drizzling melted white chocolate over the cooled cookies and adding glittery sprinkles.
Better yet, you can decorate them with crushed candy canes for an extra kick of peppermint flavor. This way is much easier and quicker than using royal icing and the cookies always turn out so pretty.
Storage Instructions
If you make these peppermint chocolate sugar cookies ahead of time and want to freeze them, just put the undecorated cookies in an airtight container and place it in the freezer.
Cookies can be frozen for up to 3 months. Decorate with the chocolate drizzle, sparkles and crushed candy canes after the cookies have thawed thoroughly and are at room temperature.
If you would like to see more Christmas cookie recipes, take a look at my Holiday Favourites.
Happy Holidays!
More Sugar Cookie Recipes
Chocolate Peppermint Sugar Cookies
Ingredients
Chocolate Peppermint Sugar Cookies
- ¾ cup unsalted butter
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon peppermint extract
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1-¼ cups all purpose-flour
- ¾ cup cocoa dutch or regular
- ¼ cup cornstarch
- ¼ teaspoon salt
White Chocolate Drizzle
- ¾ cup white chocolate chips
- sprinkles and crushed peppermint flavoured candy canes
Instructions
Chocolate Peppermint Sugar Cookies
- In a large bowl, combine flour, cocoa, cornstarch and salt. Whisk until blended and set aside.
- In the bowl of your mixer, beat the butter and sugar on medium speed until light and creamy, making sure to scrape the bowl a couple of times.
- Add the egg, peppermint and vanilla extract. Beat well making sure to stop and scrape the bowl.
- With the mixer on low speed, slowly add the flour mixture and mix until well blended.
- Remove the dough, divide and shape it into 2 disks about an inch thick. Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least an hour and up to 2 days maximum.
- Roll the dough out to about 1/4 inch thickness, if dough is sticky you may want to dust your surface with a little bit of cocoa.
- With a cookie cutter, cut as many shapes as you can, place cookies on the baking sheet. Re-roll the remaining dough and cut out more cookies. Repeat until all the dough is used.
- Bake in the oven for 8 minutes or until cookies look dry on top. Let cookies rest on baking sheet for a few minutes before removing them to a rack to cool completely.
White Chocolate Drizzle
- Melt the white chocolate chips in the microwave in 25 seconds increments. Stirring in between increments.
- Pour the melted chocolate into a pastry bag (with Wilton tip #3) or small plastic bag (cut off a very tiny corner). Starting from the top of the cookie and moving your wrist quickly down the cookie, drizzle the melted chocolate onto the cookies. If desired add coarse sugar, crushed peppermint candy canes or sprinkles while chocolate is still wet.
Notes
- The dough can be made ahead and refrigerated for up to two days, so you can quickly make the dough, pop it in the refrigerator and make the cookies later.
- Cookies can be frozen for up to 3 months. Place baked cookies (undecorated) in an airtight container and store in the freezer. To thaw cookies, place in the refrigerator overnight. Cookies can be decorated once they are thawed and at room temperature.
Nutrition
This post was originally published in December 2018. It has been updated with added text.