Tina's Chic Corner

As St. Patty’s Day approaches, I’m seeing more green colored food online (i.e. pinterest.com and all the various social media outlets). I simply can’t go there. Not for the lack of spirit, but because it looks unappealing to me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind a little green color in my food, but I’ve never been one to want green eggs and ham. I do, however, love mint and mint is notoriously green colored (even if not naturally so).

In honor of the one day a year when everyone is Irish, I was inspired to create these bar cookies which are loaded with mint chocolate chips and mint flavored wafer cookies.

Double Mint Cookie Bars Recipe
(Makes 16 servings)

Ingredients:

1 and 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
7 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup white sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
3/4 cup semi-sweet mint chocolate chips (I used Nestle Dark Chocolate & Mint Morsels)
1/2 cup crushed mint cookies (equivalent to about 7 cookies) (I used Keebler Grasshopper Mint & Fudge Cookies)

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Line a 8 x 8 baking pan with tin foil, grease it, and set it aside.
Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside the dry ingredients.
Cream the butter, white sugar, and light brown sugar.
Mix in the vanilla extract and egg.
Gradually mix in the dry ingredients.
Mix in the mint chocolate chips and crushed mint cookies.
Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake it in the preheated oven for about 23 minutes or until a tester inserted comes out clean.

Store it in an air tight container at room temperature or in a freezer friendly bag in the freezer.

I love cookies, but I think I love bar cookies even more because they are much faster to whip up.

I had very strict requirements for these bar cookies.

1. They must tasty minty, but not too minty. I don’t want it to seem like you just rinsed with minty mouth wash.

2. The cookie base must be less sweet than a typical chocolate chip cookie because the mint chocolate chips and mint wafer cookies will add a lot of sweetness. I like sweets just as much as the next person, heck probably even more, but I don’t want it to feel like a cavity just formed by eating one.

3. I loved the idea of adding mint flavored wafer cookies to these bar cookies. They add a great crunchy texture and they make them taste more minty. The trick here is to not add too many wafers to the batter or to beat them up too much so they end up lost as minty chocolate sand. Either of those problems and you’ll feel like you’re only eating mint in the finished product instead of enjoying the cookie base itself.

4. As I mentioned earlier, I don’t mind a little color to my goodies (whether it’s green for St. Patrick’s day or pink for Valentine’s Day). However, it has to be just the right amount of green because otherwise it doesn’t seem natural and quite frankly grosses me out.

Wow, that is a lot to expect from a bar cookie but I definitely think I nailed it here!

Minty. Check. Sweet. Check. Pretty. Check. Outrageously delicious. Check. Okay, maybe that last point was not part of the four goals that I mentioned, but that’s an obvious goal for every creation.