Christmas cookie party

This weekend went by too fast and I didn't get nearly as much done as I wanted to! But I did manage to bake 7 dozen amazing cookies and have a fun book club get together with the girls! Every year for our December book club we all get together and read a Christmas-y book and trade cookies with each other. Everyone makes a dozen for each person attending, then you trade and end up with dozens of everyone's favorite cookies! It's my favorite book club of the year!

This time read we read the BEST book! It is...

I know what you are thinking.. Santa Claus?? What?! But it is really such an amazing story! It is extremely well written historical account about Santa's life. It answers pretty much everything that you ever questioned as a child and finds a way to explain all things Christmas, like where do stockings come from? How does Santa get toys to everyone? How do reindeer fly? And, what happened to Amelia Earhart? Such a cool story and I can't wait to share it with my kids when they get too big to "believe"!

Besides a wonderful book, my sister in law made yummy chicken and gnocchi dumplings and it was all snowy and cozy! Such a great way to spend a winter day!

Now for the good stuff... Cookies! Every year I end up bringing some kind of minty yummy cookies. The past years I have made Andes Mint Fudge  , Andes Mint Cookies , last year chocolate peppermint oreos were easy and delish! This year was another minty treat,  mint chocolate chip cookies! 

 These were pretty easy, but lets be real, baking 80+ cookies is time consuming. The original recipe is here. I did some serious modifying and they came out super yummy.

You need:

For the record I tripled the recipe and ended up with exactly 84 cookies

1 box of white cake mix

1 egg

1 stick of melted butter

4 oz of softened cream cheese (I used 1/3fat)

1 tsp of vanilla

1 tsp of peppermint extract

1/2 bag of mint chips (in the holiday section)

1/2 milk chocolate chips

8 crushed us candy canes or peppermints.

1. preheat to 350

2. Combine; cake mix, egg, butter, cream cheese and mix in the Kitchen aid. I suppose you could do it by hand, but why?

3. Then add in the extracts

4. Now, by hand, mix in the chips and candy.

5. Chill for at least 30 minutes, the fresh made dough is super soft and hard to scoop.

6. After they are cool and a little more firm, then scoop onto a cookie sheet. I used my little pampered chef cookie scooper thing. It's great, seriously! No need to grease with all the butter, they come right off.

7. Bake for 9-11 minutes. Then let the cookies sit on the pan and set up for about 2 more minutes. 

8. Flatten out slightly with a spatula (They are pretty puffy) and let cool on wax paper.

They are pretty, festive and tasty!