Fresh Mint Spice Cookies (Grown-up Cookies)

'Tis the season to be jolly. Merrily I went, to whip up a batch of cookies never seen before; in this household at least. I didn't have a particular recipe in mind. So I threw whatever ingredients I thought could work, into the dough, steadfastly staying away from the 'usual stuff'. This is a cookie for grown-ups, mind you. There are no chocolate chips, sprinkles or nonpareils here!

I had one goal, however. The colours red and green, both traditional colours of Christmas, had to be included. As my mint plant was in dire need of a trim, I used that for the green and since I had dried cranberries, why not for the red.

These are fresh out of the oven. I was so pleased with the results that I munched a couple even before it had the chance to properly cool.

Fresh Mint Spice Cookies

The cookie was delicious ; a pleasant, faint spicy aftertaste. A friend rated it an eight out of ten! My other half, of course, loved it! The line, 'sugar and spice, and everything nice' , comes to mind.

It's really easy to do, a matter of mixing all the ingredients together and voila! Still, I did it step-by-step, just to be sure I was combining everything properly.

Fresh Mint Spice Cookies
Adapted from www.spiceupthecurry.com .
Ingredients (18 cookies):
- 1 cup + 2 tbsp all purpose flour
- ½ tsp baking soda
- 110g butter (softened)
- ½ cup soft brown sugar
- 2 tbsp full cream milk
- ½ tsp chilli flakes (seedless)
- ½ tsp ground nutmeg
- 1 tbsp sesame seeds
- 30 fresh mint leaves (chopped)
- 2 tbsp craisins/dried cranberries, pomegranate juice infused (chopped)

How-to:
1) Preheat oven to 170C. Line baking tray with baking paper.

2) In a large bowl, combine butter and sugar using a baking spoon or a whisk. Beat or stir vigorously until it is well incorporated.

3) Then, sift the flour and baking soda over. Add milk. Stir to combine. I resorted to lightly kneading it with my hand midway. It was just much faster.

4) Add chilli flakes, sesame seeds, ground nutmeg, mint leaves and craisins. Knead this into the dough, until just combined.

5) Use a rounded spoon. Place one tablespoon of dough onto the lined baking tray. Use a flat spoon to flatten the dough into a round shape (as pictured below); a little over 1.5inches in diameter for me.

6) Do a test bake (bake one cookie) to find out best baking time and temp for your oven. I baked these for about 8-10 minutes at 170C. It gave me a cookie that's just done; in between soft and crispy. Lower the temp and bake awhile longer if you want it crispier.

Note: The cookies were still good two weeks in an air-tight container.

1) Fresh mint, nutmeg, sesame seeds, cranberries, chilli flakes.
2) Combining the butter and sugar.
3) Adding flour, baking soda and milk.
4) The cookie dough.

1) Add sesame seeds, cranberries, fresh mint and nutmeg into the dough.
2) The completed cookie dough.
3) Spoon one tablespoon out.
4) Onto the baking tray it goes.

Use a spoon to flatten the dough.

Freshly baked and out of the oven!

Mmmm....fresh mint spice cookies!

The back of the cookie.

The texture in between.

This done, my next goal is to bake more of these to give away to friends and family for Christmas! Am I excited!

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This post is linked to Cook and Celebrate: Christmas 2015 hosted by Yen from GoodyFoodies, Diana from The Domestic Goddess Wannabe and Zoe from Bake for Happy Kids .