Has your family made chocolate chip cookies every single year, and now they’re getting stale? Is Santa tired of your family’s boring store-bought cookie mix? Perhaps you’re going to a holiday party with nothing to bring but your same old recipes? Well, fear not—you’ve come to the right place. Today, I’m going to guide you along the journey of making white chocolate peppermint cookies!

I know, I know; white chocolate is not everybody’s cup of tea. However, one of my favorite cookies is white chocolate macadamia nut, and these are just that with a little twist. Twist. Peppermint? Candy Cane? Ha. Ha. (Please laugh; I know I’m a world-class comedian.)

Anyway, I digress. Let’s get started by making sure you have your ingredients.

What you’ll need:

• 1 ¼ cup all-purpose flour
• 1 stick unsalted butter
• ¾ cup white chocolate chips
• ½ cup crushed candy canes (plus a little more to keep off to the side!)
• 1 pinch of salt
• ¼ teaspoon baking soda
• 1 pinch baking powder
• 1 egg
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ teaspoon vanilla extract
• ¼ teaspoon peppermint oil

💡TIP!💡 If peppermint isn’t your thing, you don’t have to add it. You can scale back on the amounts I have given, or you can completely omit the candy canes and/or the oil. By itself, this recipe makes a great white chocolate chip cookie.

The Recipe!

First, you’ll start with a bowl. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. (And, please, make sure you don’t mix up the measurements for baking soda and baking powder; this results in far too many kitchen tragedies.)

Get a separate bowl. Do not try to do the following step in the bowl with the dry ingredients. “But Reece, it all goes in the same place anyway.” No. You’ve been warned. You’ll want a bowl on the larger side; you will add the dry ingredients to it later.

Do me a favor, and double-check that your butter is unsalted; there is a difference, and you’ll thank me later. In this separate bowl, beat your butter and sugar. You’ll want to use either a handheld or a stand mixer. You’re aiming for a light and fluffy consistency. 

While your mixer is running, add the egg. After that’s mixed in, then add the vanilla extract and peppermint oil. While I did give you measurements for those, measuring with your heart is also okay. Don’t overdo it, though—a little bit goes a long way.

Now, add the dry mixture to the wet mixture. At this point, you’ll add the chocolate chips and the crushed candy canes. Just make sure you only add the ½ cup; you may recall that I told you to keep a little bit more—that’s for later.

Pause! This is a great time to preheat the oven. Set it to 350ºF.

It’s now time for my least favorite part of making cookies: the manual labor. Mix all the ingredients together until they are fully combined. You won’t be able to use a mixer; the dough will get too thick. Sorry for the arm workout.

Once the dough is all mixed, you can ball it up into your cookies! They can be any size you like, but I think they work best at around 2 tablespoons. For reference, an ice cream scoop is the perfect size, but you can eyeball it.

Remember the extra crushed candy canes? It’s time for those. Spread them out across a flat surface, or pour them into a bowl. Lightly dip your cookie dough balls so they’re coated.

Lay them out on the baking sheet. This recipe yields about 18 cookies, so you may need to make them in batches.

Set the baking sheet in the fridge for about 5-10 minutes. This gives the cookies a chance to cool and solidify before we set them in the oven. Once they’re ready for the oven, they’ll bake for… 6-7 minutes. (Fine—immaturity wins again. Do the hand motion; laugh all you want. Numbers are so funny, aren’t they?)

Once they’re done, let them cool for a few minutes, and then they’ll be ready to serve.

There you have it: a recipe for white chocolate peppermint cookies! I hope you enjoy this recipe and share these cookies with everyone you love. Or, I guess, you can keep them to yourself if you want—no shame.

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The AnchorNews staff wishes everybody a wonderful holiday season! Check back next semester for regularly scheduled articles. For now, you can check out chsanchornews.org for a large archive of student-written articles. For more Congrats, You Can Cook! articles, check back every other Saturday. Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram @chsanchornews. Have an amazing winter break, and we’ll see you in January!