Cook Club: Chocolate mint cookies with a side of Irish beer

I love Girl Scout cookies. Who doesn't? The only downside of this sugary love is the inevitable crash when the yearly cookie sales end and I'm out of thin mints for the next 11 months.

So for this month's Cook Club, photographer and videographer Liz Zabel and I decided to dive into making our own version, so we can curb our cookie cravings throughout the year.

There are a lot of homemade thin mint recipes out there, and after comparing several of them, we selected one from PBS's Fresh Tastes blog and adapted it slightly.

Things I learned along the way — while I love my stand mixer, sometimes mixing by hand makes a better dough. My dough was initally too dry, so I ended up adding extra oil before I could work it into a ball.

For the chocolate sauce, the recipe calls for chopped semisweet chocolate, so I cheated a bit and used chocolate chips — essentially pre-chopped. When I was dipping the cookies in the sauce, several of them fell apart — the smaller cookie bites I ended up with were just as tasty but a little less pretty when they were finished. I tried baking one sheet of cookies at 7 minutes and one at 8 — the cookies that baked longer held together better when I was dipping them in the melted chocolate.

The chocolate sauce, even after it had set, melted quickly in my hand, so these cookies are best stored in the freezer and served cold and crisp.

My conclusion? These cookies are tasty, but enough work that I'm not going to stop supporting my local Girl Scouts anytime soon.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, and also in hommage to the beer and Girl Scout cookie paring events I've seen popping up around the Corridor lately, we thought we'd add in our own Irish beer-and-cookie pairing, just for fun. A visit to guinness.com yielded a suggestion of pouring Guinness stout over an ounce of creme de menthe and garnishing with a fresh mint leaf.

The green liqueur tinted the beer's foam with a festive St. Patrick's Day's color. The first sip was a bit overly minty, but the following sips improved the flavor. The drink did pair exceptionally well with the cookies. Cheers!

HOMEMADE THIN MINT COOKIES

1 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

1 cup powdered sugar

1 cup cocoa powder

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 cups flour

Chocolate topping

14 ounces semisweet chocolate, finely chopped

1/4 teaspoon peppermint extract

Crushed candy cane

To make the cookies: beat butter and sugar until it is light and fluffy. Add cocoa powder and beat, add egg yolk, vanilla, peppermint and salt. Add flour and mix just until batter is mixed and specks of flour no longer visible. If dough doesn't stick together, add oil as needed. I added two tablespoons canola oil.

Divide dough into two balls, flatten into disks and wrap in plastic wrap. Chill in fridge 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Remove first disk of dough and roll out on floured surface to about 1/8 inch thickness. Use cookie cutter to stamp out cookies and transfer to parchment-lined baking sheet. Reroll out dough scraps until as much dough is used as possible; repeat with second disk. Bake 8 minutes. Let cool fully on the baking sheet.

To make the chocolate sauce: Create a double boiler by resting a stainless steel or glass bowl over a few inches of water in a saucepan over medium-low heat. Add chocolate to bowl and let melt, stirring occasionally until very smooth. Stir in peppermint extract.

Using a fork, dip cookies into chocolate and transfer back to parchment-lined baking sheet. Top with crushed candy cane and let chill in freezer until chocolate is well set. Best served straight from the freezer.

Source: adapted from Adrianna Adarme of Public Broadcasting Service's Fresh Tastes blog.

l Comments: (319) 398-8434; alison.gowans@thegazette.com